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PURGATORY; 

Doctrinally, Practically, and His- 
torically Opened. 



WILLIAM BARROWS, D. D. 

I l 

AUTHOR OF "THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN." 



WITH AH INTRODUCTION, 
BY ALEXANDER McKENZlE, D. D. 

I 6 jour, u 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



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INTRODUCTION. 



I have yielded to the desire of the author that I would 
write a few words as an Introduction to this work. I cannot 
think that a book whose theme is of so general interest, and 
which has been so seldom treated with any detail, or with 
any approach to completeness, needs anything beyond itself 
to commend it to thoughtful readers. If there were such ne- 
cessity, it is not for me to meet it. I am compelled to turn 
to the book for my own enlightenment, rather than with any 
hope of making a substantial addition to the information which 
it is designed to present. The protracted study and investi- 
gation of the author, with his characteristic acuteness of 
thought and of statement, prepare the reader to be at once 
instructed and interested. 

, So long as we see men passing out of the world, and stand 
with strained and tearful eyes watching them as they vanish 
beyond our sight, so long as we ourselves are hastening into 
the land which stretches far away from us and from which 
there is no return, will it be a question of intensest interest into 
what estate and condition of life men enter when they have 
gone hence and are not here any more. We ask with an 
earnestness which is deeper and more sacred than curiosity, 
and " there comes no answer of reply." Centuries of ques- 
tioning, ages of longing, have added nothing to our knowl- 
edge. If we have learned more of the origin of man, we 
have gained nothing which explains his destiny. All that 
we know comes not by study, but by revelation. God has 



i v INTR OD UCTION. 

spoken by the prophets. The Son of God has come from 
the world beyond, and, incarnate among us, has told us of 
that which is and is to be. He has taught us all that we need 
for our present governance. He has declared the will of God, 
and with that our duty and the issues of our life. We are 
assured of man's eternal being, and that whatsoever a man 
sows, being here, that shall he reap, being there. To make 
our endless years into a life of righteousness and blessedness, 
the Lord has come into the world, lived here, died, risen, as- 
cended, and now makes intercession, until he shall come again 
and receive his own unto himself. This is our simple and 
practical faith. We have enough knowledge for duty and for 
hope. It would have been well if men had been content with 
that which is clearly revealed. This is more than could be 
expected. Man knows too much not to wish to know more. 
We tenderly repeat the words of solace and of promise, "Until 
He come ;" and while the words linger on our lips the heart 
frames again the questions so long asked, so long unanswered, 
When ? When will He come ? What shall be till the day 
dawns; till the throne is set and the Lord comes with his angels ? 
It is clear that the first Christians expected the speedy return 
of the Lord. It was not long to wait for the consummation of 
all things. When they found that his coming was delayed, 
they knew not for how long, out of the delay sprang the ar- 
dent inquiry, Where, then, are the departed saints whose glory 
awaits his return ? The question still remains, If there is to 
be a day of resurrection, when all who are in their graves 
shall come forth ; if there is to be a day of judgment, when 
all shall give account for the deeds done in the body, in what 
condition are they living who have gone from this world, 
leaving the body in the grave, and waiting for that day of 
wonder and of triumph for the saints ? It is in vain that we 



INTR OD UCTION. v 

put aside the inquiry. It is almost equally in vain that we 
attempt to answer it. Every man has asked it. Every min- 
ister has had the question put to him, and has been sad as 
the disappointed questioner turned away from him. We 
must wait. The day comes when we shall know. To-day's 
duty is enough for to-day's moments. 

The doctrine of Purgatory is an attempt to answer the 
question. It has been put to other and to base uses, but it 
had its place in a scheme of knowledge which claimed to over- 
leap the boundaries between the worlds. In its simplest form 
the doctrine is not to be held up to scorn. Too -many intel- 
ligent and devout hearts have believed it. The absurd forms 
which it has assumed, the ridiculous accretions which have 
gathered about it, should not blind us to the principle which 
lies underneath the belief. But even that principle we are not 
able to receive. It has no authority which commends it to 
the Protestant mind. Nor does it lessen the number or di- 
minish the urgency of our inquiries. It raises new difficulties. 
It darkens counsel. The profound questions of the soul are 
not satisfied. The doctrine of the Resurrection is not illu- 
mined. Through all its superstitions, past even its clearest 
suggestions, we return to the words of Christ and his apos- 
tles, to find that which we can at least believe ; which com- 
mends itself to our conscience and our hope; which gives us 
courage to wait until we know. The Reformation did well, 
a work of light and of liberty, when it swept away this whole 
fabric and brought men face to face with the Word of God. 

It cannot be without advantage that we review the rise and 
the course of this doctrine of purgatory under the guidance of 
the writer whose pages are now before us. It is right that he 
should examine and judge the doctrine in its historic devel- 
opment and in its present form. It is fair to use its absurdi- 

I* 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

ties against its principles. It is wholesome for the reader to 
see how far and into how wild paths speculation may be led 
when it wanders away from that which is revealed, into that 
which for the present is unknown. It is good to be brought 
back to the Word of God and to be set in new content among 
its teachings and its promises. That will be the end of the 
book. 

With these words of introduction I leave the reader to the 
author. He will lay aside the book wiser than when he takes 
it in hand, with a larger sense of the greatness of the themes 
of which this work treats but one, and of the discontent which 
must follow the study of them in the present light ; let it be 
hoped also with a devout willingness that the secret things 
should wait God's day of fuller revelation, while the things 
which are already revealed receive a prompt and cheerful 
belief and obedience. 

ALEXANDER McKENZIE. 

Campobello, N. B., Aug. 14, 1882. 



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CHAPTER I. 

Preliminary page i 

CHAPTER II. 
The Doctrine of Purgatory Stated 5 

CHAPTER III. 
Purgatory as a Place 13 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Theory of Purgatorial Sufferings 19 

CHAPTER V. 

The Nature of the Sufferings in Purgatory .... 25 

CHAPTER VI. 

Visits from Purgatory - — - — 32 

CHAPTER VII. 

Visits to Purgatory - 39 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Theory of Indulgences 56 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Theory of the Mass, and its Use 83 

CHAPTER X. 

Other Methods of Relief 87 

CHAPTER XL 

Cases of Rescue and Escape from Purgatory - 95 

CHAPTER XII. 

Aid from Souls in Purgatory — 99 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Introduction of the Doctrine into the Church ■»-- 104 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Gregory the Great shapes the Theory of Purgatory 112 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Purgatorial System of the Ancient Egyptians -- 125 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Purgatorial System of the Ancient Hindoos - 140 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Purgatory of Zoroaster and the Parsi - 152 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Greek Purgatory 169 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Roman Purgatory - « — 183 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Gnostic Pressure on the Church 190 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Manichaean Pressure on the Church - 199 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Retrospect and Summary- ....... ....... — .... 214 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Conclusion----- - 220 



PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER I. 



PRELIMINARY. 



The Doctrine of Purgatory is interwoven with the 
entire Papal System, and modifies all the other tenets 
of this Church. It follows the devout Romanist with 
a power that pertains to no other dogma, for it touches 
him in those points where man feels most deeply — his 
dread of suffering, and affection for kindred and friends. 
If one within the holy communion of Rome incline to 
be irreverent, disobedient, contumacious or heretical, 
the practical application of this doctrine is the extremest 
veto power of the hierarchy. It not only traces him 
through all the ways of his erring life with admonition 
and check, but at his dying bed it points him signifi- 
cantly to approaching sufferings such as language can 
but poorly set forth. 

Claiming to be the successors of the apostles and 
the vicegerents of God in the prerogative of forgiving 
sins, the priests have used this doctrine as the great 
Key of St. Peter in opening and shutting the door of 



2 PURGATORY. 

heaven. There is a terrible power in it when brought 
to bear on an ignorant, or a sensitive conscience, and 
that power is obtained and applied by appeal to all 
that we shrink from in anguish, and to all that is 
endearing and tender in the ties of affection. 

What Mosheim says of the power and use of this 
doctrine in the tenth century will apply with but little 
variation to the practical workings of it in any age or 
community. "The fire which burns out the stains 
remaining on human souls after death was an object 
of intense dread to all, nay, was more feared than the 
punishments of hell. For the latter, it was supposed, 
might be easily escaped, if they only died rich in the 
prayers and merits of the priests, or had some saint to 
intercede for them. But not so the former. And the 
priests, perceiving this dread to conduce much to their 
advantage, endeavored by their discourses, and by 
fables and fictitious miracles, continually to raise it 
higher and higher. ' } * 

It is proposed in this treatise to present a systematic 
collection of the statements, principles and illustrations 
of the doctrine of Purgatory, as held formerly and in 
our own times, but specially in our own times, by the 
Roman-catholic Church. 

The uses of this doctrine in the United States are 
fully illustrated from American authors, well accred- 
ited by American Archbishops and Bishops. Indeed, 
one peculiarity of this work is a total reliance on well- 
known and officially approbated Papal writings, about 

* Eccl. His. Cent. X. Part II. ch. 3. 



PRELIMINAR Y. 3 

forty being quoted. The book is not controversial, 
theological or argumentative, but simply historical, 
that this leading, compacting and pivotal doctrine in 
the Papal system of faith and practice may be well 
understood. And it is believed that no candid Roman- 
ist will take serious exception to the collated historical 
statement of the doctrine in its principles and uses, or 
to the tone and manner in which it is done. 

As Romanism is putting forth anew its special 
claims and prerogatives, perhaps it will not prove an 
ill-timed service to the Church and the State, particu- 
larly in America, to present authoritatively from their 
side, and totally, this central dogma. Its relations to 
the physical sciences and to psychology, as well as to 
morals and theology, as held and taught commonly in 
the nineteenth and not the twelfth century, will be 
appreciated by the studious reader. 

Moreover, it is believed that no doctrine within the 
Christian area, holding the faith of so many, and 
aspiring to the faith of so many more, is in waiting, 
like this, for explanatory and practical and historical 
unfolding. With all our books, at least in English, 
it is thought that the place for a round treatise on this 
topic is yet wanting its book. The more is the won- 
der, when it is considered how much Protestants have 
to do with this doctrine practically and socially and 
civilly. 

The genealogy or genetic exposition of the general 
doctrine of purgatory, as held before Christian times, 
claims a large space in the book. For since the Scrip- 

Purgatory. 2 



4 PURGATORY. 

tures are so barren of material for this elaborate system, 
it seemed good to look up the sources whence it came. 
Therefore the eschatology of the ancient Egyptians, 
Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, and Romans has been 
analyzed and reproduced as to the point in hand. The 
same may be said of the Gnostic and Manichsean sys- 
tems of religion, that so environed and struggled to 
permeate young Christianity. 

In this gleaning of the ancients concerning the 
punitive state of their dead, the author finds that he 
has prematurely and unconsciously written on one of 
the leading topics of the day within the field of divine 
government and religious theories, namely, Future 
Punishment. The historical digest thus made, for 
another purpose, furnishes a fair statement of the views 
of the ancient religionists on this now popular question. 
Here is, therefore, a well-defined background prepared 
by the reason and philosophy and anticipation of un- 
inspired men, to which the Christian inquirer should 
add all and only what inspiration has added, while 
bringing life and immortality into the light. 



THE DOCTRINE STATED. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY STATED. 

A STATEMENT of The Doctrine of Purgatory can 
be best made only in the language of those who believe 
and teach and practise it. We quote, therefore, 
definitions and expositions of it from catechisms, 
canons, manuals and creeds that have been officially 
adopted or accredited by the Papal Church. The first 
quotations made will show the doctrine as held and 
practised to-day, and in our own neighborhoods. 

Miiller says that at death every soul goes " either 
to purgatory, or to heaven, or to hell." They go to 
purgatory x c who leave this world without having fully 
paid the debt of temporal punishment due to their 
sins, the guilt of which has been forgiven by the 
sacrament of penance." There they " suffer for a 
time on account of their sins. " li Because it cannot 
be supposed that those who die suddenly have either 
the time or the dispositions necessary to atone for all 
their faults, therefore the divine goodness has made a 
place in the world to come, in which the soul is cleansed 
from his little faults and imperfections. ' ' * 

* Familiar Explanations of Christian Doctrine. By Rev. M. Miiller; 
approbated by J. R. Bayley, Archbishop of Baltimore. Catholic Publi- 
cation Society, 1875. 



6 PURGATORY. 

Purgatory is u a middle state of souls suffering for 
a time on account of their sins." Such souls go there 
1 ' when they die in less sins, which we call venial ; or 
when they have not satisfied the justice of God for 
former transgressions.' 5 * 

Purgatory is "a place in the other life, where 
some souls suffer for a time before they can go to 
heaven." All go there u who die indebted to God's 
justice on account of mortal sin."f 

The Papal Church "knows that a temporal punish- 
ment frequently remains due to the sinner, after the 
guilt of his crime has been remitted. . . . She knows 
that frequently her children are summoned from life 
with part of this penalty unpaid, and that they endure 
a purgation, therefore, in the other world until, being 
no longer debtors to justice, they shall be made par- 
takers of mercy, and having paid the last farthing, 
they shall enter into the glory of the I^ord."! 

In the Douay Catechism we find the following: 
" Whither go such as die in venial sin, or not having 
fully satisfied for the punishment due to their mortal 
sins? To purgatory, till they have made full satis- 
faction for them, and then to heaven. ' ' 

"A middle state of souls who depart this life in 

* Boston Catechism. For the use of the Catholic Church in the 
Diocese of Boston. Boston, Patrick Donahoe, 1873. 

t Butler's Catechism ; Revised, Enlarged, Improved and Recom- 
mended by the four Roman-catholic Archbishops of Ireland, and by The 
Right Rev. Dr. Kenrick of Philadelphia. New York, 1847 ; Boston, 1S73. 

t Dr. England's Garden of the Soul : A Manual of Papal Doctrines, 
Forms and Devotions. With the Approbation of the Right Rev. Dr. 
Hughes. Pp. 63, 64. See also pp. 36, 84, 265-280 and 305. New York, 
1847. 



THE DOCTRINE STATED 7 

God's grace, yet not without some lesser stains or 
guilt of punishment which retard them from entering 
heaven. ' ' * 

"A middle state of souls suffering for a time on 
account of their sins. ' ■ f 

u There is a place distinct from hell and from 
paradise, called Purgatory, because in it those souls 
are purified which die in a state of grace, yet have 
not satisfied in their life the punishment of the sins, 
either venial but not yet remitted, or mortal and 
already pardoned. n " They do not come out thence 
without having first entirely paid to divine justice the 
punishment corresponding to their guilt. "J 

1 ' Constanter teneo purgatorium esse, animasque 
ibi detentas fidelium sufiragiis juvari. n § 

The words of the Council of Trent, run thus: 

" Whereas the Catholic Church, instructed by the 
Holy Ghost, has, from the sacred writings and the 
ancient traditions of the fathers, taught, in sacred 
councils, and very recently in this oecumenical synod, 
that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there 
detained are relieved by the suffrages of the faithful, 
but chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, the 
holy synod enjoins on bishops that they diligently 

* The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, Contained in the Profession 
of faith by Pope Pius IX. P. 47. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1855. 

t Sunday-school Manual. Approved by Benedict, Bishop of Boston. 
P. 17. Patrick Donahoe, Boston, 1843. 

% Purgatory Opened to the Piety of the Faithful ; or The Month of 
November. With the Approbation of the Most Rev. John Hughes, 
D. D., Archbishop of New York. Pp. 15, 22. Dunigan & Brother, 1855. 

§ Creed of Pius IV. A. D. 1560-65 
2* 



8 PURGATORY. 

strive that the sound doctrine touching purgatory, 
delivered by the holy fathers and sacred councils, be 
believed, held, taught and everywhere proclaimed by 
the faithful in Christ."* 

This Decree was passed on the last night of the 
last session of the last ecclesiastical council of the 
Church of Rome, Dec. 3, 1563. It is therefore not 
only supreme, but the last authorised statement of 
that church. 

The Catholicism of this council is more specific 
than its Decree: u Bst purgatorius ignis, quo piorum 
animae, ad definitum tempus cruciatse, expiantur, ut 
eis in seternam patriam ingressus patere possit, in 
quam nihil coinquinatum ingreditur. " f 

u The Catholic doctrine concerning purgatory may 
be briefly stated thus: That Almighty God has ap- 
pointed in the next world a third place, which is 
neither heaven nor hell, but a middle place as it is 
called, in which certain souls, who will in the end go 
to heaven, are for a while detained. 

" We believe that some souls, the souls of little 
children, for instance, who have been made members 
of Christ's church by holy baptism; or of others 
who, by God's grace, have been enabled to preserve 
through life the purity and innocence of children; 
or of others, again, who, by the help of the same 
grace, have by their sufferings, or acts of voluntary 
penance satisfied God's justice for the temporal pun- 

* Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Twenty-fifth Session. 
Buckley's Translation. 
t Part II., De Symb. 5. 



THE DOCTRINE STATED. 9 

ishment due for the sins of their past life, are re- 
ceived by Almighty God, as soon as they have left 
the body, into the enjoyment of everlasting bliss. 

( c In like manner, we believe that there are other 
souls which pass at once out of this world into the 
realms of everlasting torment in the next. 

"But we believe also that there are many others 
which, although not destined to receive eternal pun- 
ishment, are yet not fit for immediate admission into 
that place into which ( there shall not enter anything 
that is defiled. ' For when we consider the careless- 
ness of the majority of men, their want of rigid self- 
examination, and blindness to their own faults, we 
can readily understand how the multitude of ordinary 
good persons may commit a thousand sins — not indeed 
grievous sins, yet sins for which they have to render 
an account in the day of judgment, such as 'idle 
words, ' for example — for which they never feel com- 
punction, nor ask the forgiveness of God. 

11 Concerning many souls, therefore, although we 
dare not hope that at the moment of their passage 
out of this world they are so free from all spot and 
stain of sin as to be ready to pass immediately into 
the presence of that Being who is of purer eyes than 
to behold iniquity, there to dwell with him at once 
and for ever; yet we feel confident that they have 
departed in the grace and favor of God, and that their 
everlasting lot, therefore, will not be cast among liars 
and blasphemers and idolaters. And we believe that 
the mercy and justice of God, in his dealings with 



io PURGATORY. 

these souls, are reconciled by their being detained for 
a certain time in a middle place, there to be punished 
and purified, and dealt with according to his good 
pleasure until he sees fit to admit them to the enjoy- 
ment of that beatific vision which is life and bliss 
everlasting. 

14 It is also a part of Catholic belief that even 
when Almighty God has forgiven sin and justified 
the repentant sinner, so that he is once more in a 
state of grace, he still reserves the infliction of some 
degree of punishment for his transgressions, as we see 
in the instance of the royal penitent David. . . . He 
yet reserves some smaller punishments to be under- 
gone by the sinner, either in this world or the next. . . . 
And when we speak of souls being purified by the 
sufferings of Purgatory, we mean, not that they are 
thus cleansed from the guilt of their sins, but only 
that they are paying this debt of punishment. . . . 
Those souls who leave this life with venial sins unre- 
pented of, obtain the remission of the guilt of them 
by the first act of contrition and love which they 
make on their separation from the body. But since 
that act is the effect of the pure bounty of God, and 
is not performed in a state of probation, it is just that 
they should suffer for their neglect in not repenting 
before death. ' ' * 

* The Clifton Tracts. Published under the Sanction of the Bishop of 
Clifton, Cardinal Wiseman, and Republished with the Approbation of 
the Most Rev. John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Tract 
No. io. Purgatory. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1856. 

We are informed in the Introduction that these tracts, thirty-seven of 



THE DOCTRINE STATED. n 

There is, perhaps, no better authority on this 
point than the Rev. Dr. John Milner. He says: 

11 There are some venial or pardonable sins, for 
the expiation of which, as well as for the temporary 
punishment due to other sins, a place of temporary 
punishment is provided in the next life; where, how- 
ever, the souls detained may be relieved by the 
prayers, alms and sacrifices of the faithful here on 
earth. 

u Oh, how consoling are the belief and practice 
of Catholics in this matter, compared with those of 
Protestants ! The latter show their regard for their 
departed friends in costly pomp and feathered pa- 
geantry, while their burial service is a cold, discon- 
solate ceremony; and as to any further communica-. 
tion with the deceased, when the grave closes on 
their remains, they do not so much as imagine any. 

"On the other hand, we Catholics know that 
death itself cannot dissolve the communion of saints 
which subsists in our church, nor prevent an inter- 
course of kind, and often beneficial offices, between 
us and our departed friends. Oftentimes we can help 
them more effectually, in the other world, by our 
prayers, our sacrifices, our alms-deeds, than we could 
in this by any temporary benefits we could bestow 
upon them. ' ' * 

them, were prepared " with the encouraging sanction of all the Catholic 
Bishops of England," and "that his Holiness the Pope, unsolicited, was 
graciously pleased to send them [the authors] his benediction upon the 
work." 

* End of Controversy. Letter XLIII. 



12 PURGATORY. 

On the fact of a purgatory we find a wider state- 
ment as to the time when it was instituted. While 
nothing is declared, we are left to infer that the 
middle state of souls opened with the other two. 
The following suggests this: " Before the birth of 
Jesus, purgatory existed for those souls which were 
condemned to it for not having fully satisfied the 
punishment due to sin. And that for these sacrifices 
and prayers were offered, it will suffice, among the 
many texts of Scripture which prove it, to adduce 
the fact described in the second book of Maccabees, 
where mention is made of the pious collection of 
twelve thousand silver drachmae, equivalent to about 
three hundred pounds of our money, which Judas 
•sent to Jerusalem to get sacrifices offered in the 
temple for the sins of the deceased soldiers. ' ' * 

* Purgatory Opened : or The Month of November. Consecrated to 
the Relief of the Souls in. Purgatory. With the Approbation of the Most 
Rev. John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Pp. 15, 16. Dun- 
igan & Brother, New York, 1855. 



AS A PLACE. 13 



CHAPTER III. 

PURGATORY AS A PLACE. 

Having fully stated the Doctrine of Purgatory, 
and in the words of its defenders, we now pass to 
some notices of the Place. It is true, the learned and 
cautious Dr. Alexander Natalis says that nothing 
certain is known of the location of Purgatory. But 
we shall see that the leading papal writers, ancient 
and modern, do enter into delineations, topographical 
and more or less minute, of the interior and local 
arrangements of purgatory. This is what we should 
expect. For the doctrine fails of the end for which 
it was introduced into the Roman Church, unless 
the pains and penalties and horrors of purgatory are 
so located and depicted as to work strongly on the 
fears of transgressors, and on the sympathies of those 
who may suppose they have friends there. 

Nor must any one suppose that the materialism, 
the grossness, or the absurdity of the location and 
its arrangements and delineations would destroy the 
credibility and utility of the doctrine. For the 
absurdity of the local descriptions has usually corres- 
ponded to the ignorance and superstition of the age 
and region. 

Then, as is well known, papal policy and teaching 



14 PURGATORY. 

discard reason and philosophy where their exercise 
endangers a dogma of the chnrch. Moreover, a vast 
majority of any Roman-catholic population, specially 
in papal countries, gives unlimited confidence to the 
teachings of the priests. As in the dark ages, so in 
the purely papal communities of to-day, as Italy, 
Spain and Mexico, no representation of the doctrine 
is so repulsive to sense and reason that the mass will 
not believe it. Taylor sets forth correctly this con- 
fidence of the multitude in their priesthood, and the 
way in which this doctrine has gained credence. 

"We do not think that the wise men in the 
Church of Rome believed these narratives; for if they 
did, they were not wise. But this we know, that by 
such stories, the people now brought into a belief of 
it, and having served their turn of them, the master- 
builders used them as false arches and centries, taking 
them away when the parts of the building were made 
firm and stable by authority. But even the better 
sort of them do believe them, or else they do worse, 
for they urge and cite the Dialogues of St. Gre- 
gory," etc.* 

" Purgatory," says Bellarmine, "is a certain place, 
in which, as if in a prison, souls are purged after this 
life which have not been fully purged in it, in order 
that, thus purged, they may be enabled to enter 
heaven, which nothing defiled shall enter." Dr. 
Alexander Natalis, of the Sorbonne, who flourished 
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, is not 

* Dissuasives from Popery. Part I. chap. I. § IV. 



AS A PLACE, 15 

clear where the place may be, but that there is such a 
place he assumes and declares. " It is not determined 
concerning the place, whether it be in this world, 
or upon earth, or in the dark air where the devils 
are, or in the hell of the damned, or in some place 
underneath, nearer the earth, that the souls are 
purged. ' ' 

It would seem that while the doctrine lay in a 
crude and ill -defined state in some minds, the location 
was not determined by common consent, and so the 
subjects of these pains were scattered through the 
world, as prisoners at large. The following exam- 
ples will illustrate this fact. They are taken from 
a very ancient Catholic work, entitled, ' ( Speculum 
Exemplorum," being quoted by Taylor in his Dis- 
suasives from Popery. 

U A certain priest, in an ecstacy, saw the soul of 
Constantius, Turritanus in the eaves of his house 
tormented with frosts and cold rains, and afterwards 
climbing up to heaven upon a shining pillow. And 
a certain monk saw some souls roasted upon spits like 
pigs, and some devils basting them with scalding 
lard. But a w T hile after they were carried to a cool 
place. . . . Bishop Theobald, standing upon a piece 
©f ice to cool his feet, was nearer to purgatory than 
he was aware, and w x as convinced of it when he heard 
a poor soul telling him that under that ice he was 
tormented; and that he should be delivered if for 
thirty days continual he would say for him thirty 
masses. And some such thing was seen by Conrade 

Purgatory. -3 



16 PURGATORY. 

and Ulderic in a pool of water, for the place of purga- 
tory was not yet resolved on. " * 

Concerning the locality of purgatory the church 
has not made any formal decision. The schoolmen, 
however, have found a place for it in their division of 
the interior of the earth. Here they make four com- 
partments; Hell, for those for ever damned; Iyimbus 
Puerorum, for children who died without baptism; 
Ivimbus Patrum, for godly men who died before Christ; 
and Purgatory, for Christians yet suffering punish- 
ment, though certain of heaven. 

In process of time not only was purgatory deter- 
mined as a locality, but its topography and architec- 
tural arrangements. In the sixteenth century the 
Spanish priests and monks shrewdly assigned graded 
apartments to purgatory, agreeing with the social 
grades in community. Of these they made eight, in 
those abodes of sorrow, as for kings; for princes; for 
grandees; for noblemen; for merchants; for ladies of 
quality ; for the wives of tradesmen ; and for the poor 
common people. Acccording to this scale the poor 
suffer the least, and the suffering increases with the 
rank, till we come to kings. Here is a net spread 
with meshes for all. There is an ad valorem assign- 
ment according as those in the several departments 
are able to pay for relief. 

Of course, to give anything like Scriptural proof 
or coloring to these notions about purgatorial regions, 
the greatest possible use was made of any passage of 

* Dissuasives from Popery. Part I. ch. I. § IV. 



AS A PLACE. 17 

Scripture that could be put into service. Such 
liberty was taken with St. Paul's statement of the 
vision of a certain one caught up to the third heaven. 
Among the manuscripts of Trinity College Library, 
Oxford, there is a short relation entited: "Visio 
Sancti Pauli Apostoli de Poenis Purgatorii." It was, 
perhaps, a work of the twelfth century, when such 
legends were most popular and profitable. At the 
entrance of purgatory St. Paul saw growing fiery 
trees, on which people were hanging by their differ- 
ent members, as by their tongues, eyes, or hair, accord- 
ing to the crimes they had committed on earth. 
Within was a great furnace with a dreadful fire, and 
beyond it a fiery lake. After having witnessed the 
operations of purgatory, he was taken to paradise to 
see the condition of the saints. By the intercession 
of St. Paul and the angels, the torments of the 
damned are remitted every week from Saturday even- 
ing to Monday morning. * 

11 Where this place is, and if there is any suspen- 
sion or interval of punishment allowed to it, is not 
expressly determined, says the Angelic Doctor, in the 
Scriptures. It is probable that it is not far from 
hell, and that the just souls are purged with the same 
fire as that with which the damned are tortured in 
hell."t 

In a work by Bellarmine, recently, if not still, a 

* St. Patrick's Purgatory ; An Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, 
Hell, and Paradise, current during the Middle Ages. By Thomas 
Wright, Esq., London, 1844. 

t The Month of November. P. 17. 



18 PURGATORY. 

handbook on papal doctrines at Rome, we find the 
following: 

"Hell is the lowest and deepest place in the 
world, that is, the centre of the earth; and thus 
Scripture in many places contrasts heaven with hell, 
as the highest place with the lowest. But in this 
depth of the earth there are four, as it were, very 
great caverns: one for the damned, which is the deep- 
est of all ; and thus it is fit that the proud demons, 
and the men their followers, should be in the low- 
est place, and as far from paradise as can be found. 
In the second cavern, which is somewhat higher, are 
those souls who suffer the pains of purgatory. In the 
third, which is also a little higher, are the souls of 
those children who have died without baptism, the 
which do not suffer the torments of fire, but only 
the perpetual privation of eternal happiness. In the 
fourth, which is the highest of all, were the souls of 
the patriarchs and prophets and other saints who died 
before the coming of Christ. For although those 
holy souls had nothing to be purged of, nevertheless 
they could not enter the blessed glory before Christ, 
by his death, had opened the gates of eternal life." 
This fourth apartment is c c the bosom of Abraham. ' ' * 

The author of this declaration — the preeminent 
controversial teacher of Romanism — the recent date of 
the re-publication, and the place where it is used as 
the Catechism of Christian Doctrine make it an ulti- 
mate authority on the location of purgatory. 

* Dottrina Cristiana, Breve. Rome, 1839. 



ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 19 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE THEORY OF PURGATORIAL SUFFERINGS. 

The ground for this imprisonment and suffering 
in purgatory may be briefly stated. The most clear 
as well as most recent exposition of the theory of 
purgatorial pains is found in Miiller. We extract 
passages enough for a full and candid statement, from 
a book having the imprimatur of Joannes Josephus, 
Episcopus. Boston. 

1 i Let us imagine a soul on the point of leaving 
this world in perfect charity with God. . . . That 
soul, no doubt, will immediately be admitted into the 
presence and enjoyment of God. ... If, on the con- 
trary, a soul leaves this world in disgrace with God, 
and dead to him by the guilt of mortal sin, that soul 
will undoubtedly be condemned to hell. . . . But 
when a soul leaves this world in the friendship of 
God, yet sullied with the stains of venial sins and 
imperfections, or without having fully satisfied the 
divine justice for the debt of temporal punishment 
due for her smaller sins, or for her more grievous 
sins, whose guilt has already been forgiven in the 
sacrament of penance, it is plain that such a soul 
cannot, in that state, go to heaven, where ' nothing 
defiled can enter;' neither can it be condemned 
to hell, because it is in friendship with God and a 

3* 



20 PURGATORY. 

living member of Jesus Christ. Therefore there 
must be some middle state where such a soul is con- 
fined for a time, till, by suffering, it is cleansed and 
purged from all these defilements of venial sins, and 
rendered fit to be admitted to the presence and enjoy- 
ment of God. . . . This place cannot be heaven; for 
no sin can enter there to be forgiven; it cannot be 
hell, for in hell there is no forgiveness; therefore it 
must be in a middle place, distinct from both. Neith- 
er can these sins which are forgiven in the next life 
be mortal sins, for a soul that dies in mortal sin is 
immediately condemned to hell, like the rich glutton 
in the gospel. Therefore it is only venial sins from 
which the soul is purged in purgatory. ' ' * 

"The souls in purgatory are holy souls. They 
are confirmed in grace, and no longer in a condition 
to offend God, or to forfeit heaven. They love God 
above everything; all their disorderly affections and 
passions have died away, and as they love God, so 
are they loved by him in an unutterable manner. 
For this reason our Lord wishes that they should be 
united to him as soon as possible; but as he is a 
God most holy and most just, his holiness and justice 
forbid him to admit them into the city of the heavenly 
Jerusalem before their indebtedness to his divine 
justice has been fully discharged, either by their own 
sufferings, or by the prayers and good works of their 
brethren on earth, "f 

* Charity to the Souls in Purgatory. By Michael Mriller, C. SS. R., 
Boston. Patrick Donahoe, 1872, pp. 5-10. 

t Ibid., pp. 95, 96. See also pp. 118, 134, 141. 



ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 21 

- 

And this is but an enlargement of an earlier state- 
ment: " Purgatory is a middle state of souls who 
depart this life in God's grace, yet not without some 
lesser stains or guilt of punishment w^hich retard 
them from entering heaven." " What sort of Chris- 
tians then go to purgatory? First. Such as die guilty 
of lesser sins, which we commonly call venial, as 
many Christians do who either by sudden death or 
otherwise are taken out of this life before they have 
repented of their ordinary failings. Secondly, such 
as have been formerly guilty of greater sins, and 
have not made full satisfaction for them to the divine 
justice."* 

On this theory of suffering, making purgatory nec- 
essary, his Eminence, Cardinal Wiseman, is not only 
very high, but very recent authority. A few passages 
from him will close this chapter. 

' l We believe that sin is forgiven, and can be for- 
given, by God alone ; we believe, moreover, that in 
the interior justification of the sinner, it is only God 
that has any part ; for it is only through his grace as 
the instrument, and through the redemption of Christ 
as the origin of grace and forgiveness, that justification 
can be wrought. And, in fact, no fasting, no prayers, 
no alms-deeds, no work that we can conceive to be 
done by man, however protracted, however extensive 
or rigorous they may be, can, according to the Catholic 

* The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, contained in the Profession 
of Faith published by Pope Pius IX, p. 47. Dunigan & Brother, New 
York, 1855. Dublin, 1838. 



22 PURGATORY. 

doctrine, have the most infinitesimal weight for obtain- 
ing the remission of sin, or of the eternal punishment 
allotted to it. This constitutes the essence of forgive- 
ness, of justification, and in it we hold that man of 
himself has no power. . . . We believe that upon this 
forgiveness of sins, that is, after the remission of that 
eternal debt which God in his justice awards to trans- 
gressions against his law, he has been pleased to reserve 
a certain degree of inferior or temporary punishment, 
appropriate to the guilt which had been incurred ; and 
it is on this part of the punishment alone that, accord- 
ding to the Catholic doctrine, satisfaction can be made 
to God. ... It is only with regard to the reserved 
degree of temporal punishment that we believe the 
Christian can satisfy the justice of God. " " Is it God' s 
ordinance that when he has forgiven sin, and so justi- 
fied the sinner as to place him once more in a state of 
grace, he still reserves the infliction of some degree of 
punishment for his transgressions? We say that un- 
doubtedly it is." u God, after the remission of sin, 
retains a lesser chastisement in his power, to be inflicted 
on the sinner. Penitential works, fasting, alms-deeds, 
contrite weeping, and fervent prayer have the power 
of averting that punishment. ' ' * 

It will be noticed that this theory of lesser chas- 
tisements and this aversion of certain punishments 
apply only to true Christians, regenerated and justified 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church. By His Eminence, Cardinal Wiseman. Dublin, 1867, PP- 33 8 > 
343. 



ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 23 

ones, who are assured of salvation. These punish- 
ments of the inferior and temporary kind, and that the 
children of God only are liable to, are those which the 
priests are supposed to have power to remit. In other 
words, the papal theory of absolution, whether taking 
effect here or in purgatory, has to do only with the 
children of God ; and by c ' the power of the keys, ' \ it 
is left to the judgment of father confessors to say how, 
and w r hen, and to what extent, these punishments may 
be remitted. And the Cardinal says, that in the exer- 
cise of this power, and discharge of this duty, they 
have obliged the poor penitents ( l to lie prostrate for a 
certain term of months or years before the doors of the 
church," and sometimes " until they were at the point 
of death."* 

Passing along to the principal topic of our inquiries, 
Dr. Wiseman says, " From this subject of satisfaction, 
I naturally proceed to the consideration of another 
topic intimately connected with it, the Catholic doc- 
trine of purgatory . . . which follows as a consequence 
or corollary from that of which I have just treated; so 
much so that the Catholic doctrine of satisfaction 
would be incomplete without it. The idea that God 
requires satisfaction, and will punish sin, w^ould not 
go to its furthest and necessary consequence, if we did 
not believe that the sinner may be so punished in 
another world as not to be wholly and eternally cast 
away from God. ... I am at a loss to conceive w^hat 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, p. 345. 



24 PURGATORY. 

can be considered in it repugnant to the justice of God 
or to the ordinary ways of Providence; what can be 
found therein opposed to the moral law in the remotest 
degree. . . A middle and temporary state, in which 
those who are not sufficiently guilty for the severer 
condemnation, nor sufficiently pure to enjoy the vision 
of His face, are for a time punished and purged, so as 
to be qualified for this blessing. \ ' * 

" Suppose that a Christian dies who has committed 
some slight transgression; he cannot enter heaven in 
this state, and yet we cannot suppose that he is to be 
condemned for ever. What alternative, then, are we 
to admit? Why, that there is some place in which 
the soul will be purged of sin and qualified to enter 
into the glory of God." f 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, pp. 347-348. 
t Ibid., p. 352. 



NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 25 



CHAPTER V. 

THE NATURE OF THE SUFFERINGS IN PURGATORY. 

Th£ papal Church has never been able to give 
such a definition of the nature of the pains in purga- 
tory as could obtain a common consent. The suffer- 
ing condition of her members in that third state 
between earth and heaven has been left for delinea- 
tion to the policy and imagination of the priesthood 
in different ages and places. Where the intellectual, 
aesthetic, and social culture have been high, these 
sufferings have been made to take on a more incor- 
poreal nature, and so have assumed the mental, and 
spiritual, and emotional cast. But in the missionary 
fields of this church, and among her uneducated 
masses, the most physical, material, and gross views 
possible have been given and received. Her unity 
of faith in this respect is a figment. The definition 
has, of course, changed from age to age, with change 
of view, as in some other doctrines ; but it has also 
shown an elasticity and adaptation to different com- 
munities in the same age. St. Thomas Aquinas, of 
the thirteenth century, makes the point very distinct: 
"Not only is there a fire, in which the souls are 
tormented, but it is the very same fire that torments 
the damned in hell and the just in purgatory.'' Yet 
Dr. Alexander, of the seventeeth century says it is 



26 PURGATORY. 

not determined "concerning the quality of those 
sensible pains which the souls held in purgatory 
undergo, whether it be true, corporeal fire, or whether 
darkness and sorrow, or any other torment and sorrow 
inflicted by the justice of God, punishing them after 
a wonderful and yet true manner." Yet Muller, 
writing for the papists of to-day in Massachusetts, 
says: "The souls in purgatory are poor souls, because 
they suffer the greatest pain of the senses, which is 
that of fire."* And he quotes with endorsement and 
to the same effect from Bede, of the eighth century: 
"Venerable Bede relates a strange thing which hap- 
pened in his time. An Englishman, named Drithel- 
mus, a good, honest man, died, and, by permission of 
God, rose again for the salvation of many. He said 
that immediately after his death his soul was con- 
ducted to purgatory by an angel. It seemed a great 
valley of deep extent, filled on one side with fire 
and flames, and on the other with snow and icebergs. 
'And I saw,' continued he, 'a great number of 
souls horribly tormented, being tossed from the fires 
to the snows, from the snows to the fires, thus passing 
from the most extreme cold to the most excessive 
heat, without having a moment of rest. I was so 
terrified at this sight, that I believed it was hell, so 
dreadful were the torments. But the angel told me 
it was purgatory, where the souls of the just expiated 
their faults.' "f Hence in the devout exercise for 

* Charity for the Sruls in Purgatory, p. 34. 
t Ibid., pp. 37, 38. 



NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 27 

the nine days preceding All Souls' Day for the 
Repose of Holy Souls in Purgatory, we find this form 
of prayer by St. Alphonsus: " Have pity on me, and 
have pity also on those blessed souls who burn in that 
fire. Mary, mother of God, succor them by thy pow- 
erful prayers. ' ' 

Miiller further says, that ( c the least degree of the 
pains of purgatory far surpasses the most excruciating 
torments of this world. ' ' And he confirms his state- 
ment by the following incident. 

4 c In the life of Blessed Margaret Alacoque it is 
related that the soul of one of her departed sisters 
appeared to her, and said, ' There you are lying com- 
fortably in your bed ; but think of the bed on which 
I am lying, and suffering the most excruciating 
pains. ' * I saw this bed, ' says the saint, ' and I still 
tremble in allmy limbs at the mere thought of it. 
The upper and lower part of it was full of red-hot 
sharp iron points, penetrating into the flesh. She 
told me that she had to endure this pain for her care- 
lessness in the observance of her rules. ■ ( My heart 
is lacerated,' she added, 'and this is the hardest of 
my pains. I suffer it for those fault-finding and 
murmuring thoughts which I entertained in my 
heart against my superiors. My tongue is eaten up 
by moths, and tormented on account of uncharitable 
words, and for having unnecessarily spoken in time of 
silence. ' ' ' Yet in another connection our author 
remarks that "the soul suffers more from the priva- 

Purgatory. a 



28 PURGATORY. 

tion of the beatific vision of God, than from all the 
other torments of purgatory. " * . 

In The Month of November we find the following: 
"It is generally allowed that there exists in purga- 
tory a real material fire, the properties of which have 
a marvellous intensity given to them by the divine 
the justice for the purpose of tormenting the souls of 
just after this life is over. . . . Compared with the 
pains of purgatory, all those wounds and dark pris- 
ons, all those wild beasts, all those heavy chains, all 
those woes and scourges, all those wheels and hatch- 
ets, all those hooks of iron, all those red-hot plates 
and caldrons of oil and boiling pitch, all those racks, 
swords, gratings, and crosses which the holy martyrs 
suffered with unconquered patience, are nothing. ' ' f 

The same author quotes Augustine thus: "St. 
Austin is of opinion that the pain suffered by a soul 
in purgatory only during the time required to open 
and shut one's eye is more severe than what St. 
Lawrence suffered on the gridiron. "J 

• ? Could these poor souls leave the fire of purgatory 
for the most frightful earthly fire, they would, as 
it were, take it for a pleasure garden; they would 
find a fifty years' stay in the hottest earthly fire more 
endurable than an hour's stay in the fire of purga- 
tory.'^ 

As to the nature of purgatorial pains, the Latin 

* Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, pp. 217, 119, 138, 32. 

t The Month of November, pp. 42, 43. 

% Ibid., p. 51. 

§ Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 35. 



NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 29 

and Greek Churches could not agree. The Romans 
believed that a material fire was one of the instru- 
ments, which the Greeks denied. The settlement of 
this point, and if possible the reconciliation of the 
Eastern and Western churches on it, was one of the 
four questions that led to the convocation of the 
Council of Florence, A. D. 1431. 

After months of vain and vexatious discussion the 
views of the two churches were drawn out, but not 
harmonised. The Greek Church held that at death 
the souls of imperfect Christians are doomed to endure 
the hidings of God's face in a region of sorrow and 
gloom, where they may be aided by the mass, pray- 
ers, and alms of the church. To this the Latin 
Church would add that the perfect go to heaven at 
once on dying, while the penitent, who yet have not 
had time to do suitable penance, are consigned to the 
pains of purgatorial fire. The dividing question was 
on material fire as a means of punishment. 

To this the papists then and since gave strict 
adhesion. And this theory of actual pain pervades 
their entire system. They do not hold that persons in 
purgatory commit sin there, or grow holier. They 
are ready for heaven except that they owe a debt for 
sin which can only be discharged by suffering. As 
Bellarmine illustrates it, they are as travellers who 
have come to the end of their journey, but it is after 
nightfall, and the gates of the city are shut. They 
must wait till morning, when they are sure of admit- 
tance. Hence he says: "You will object that they 



3 o PURGATORY. 

may be in doubt whether they are in hell or purgatory. 
Not so. For in hell God is blasphemed, in purgatory 
he is praised. In hell there is neither habit of faith, 
nor hope, nor love of God ; in purgatory all of these. ' ' 

The Catechism of the Council of Trent thus 
speaks of the nature of the pains in purgatory: 
" There is a purgatorial fire [ignis], tormented in 
which the souls of the pious make expiation for a 
certain period, that an entrance may be opened for 
them into that eternal country where nothing that 
defileth can enter. "* 

The duration of the detention in purgatory is as 
uncertain among papal authorities as the nature of 
the sufferings. Dr. Alexander says that it is not 
determined c c concerning the duration of these purga- 
tory pains, how long the souls are detained there. 
Soto thought that no soul continued in purgatory 
above ten years, yet it is a matter altogether un- 
certain how many years their pains shall last. ' ' Miil- 
ler cites the case of a brother who procured thirty 
masses for the soul of his sister. At the offering of 
the last one for her it was revealed to him that but 
for those thirty masses she ( ' would have suffered in 
purgatory to the end of the world, "f 

The whole region of purgatory is a land of tor- 
ment. Massy mountains of fire are there, and on 
their sides these miserable ones wander about. They 
glide through valleys of flame, as fishes in their own 

* On the Fifth Article of the Creed. 

t Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 24. 



NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 31 

element. They are driven by avenging fiends into 
caves, whose roof, sides, and floor, are a flaming 
furnace. They are made to float wildly about in 
boiling lakes, and anon they are stiffening on ice- 
bergs. Through the same member, appetite or pas- 
sion by which the guilty sufferer offended, is he now 
tormented. So the blasphemer or slanderer is hung 
up by the tongue to swing to and fro in the never 
weary wind. As one traveller after another is sent 
through these gloomy regions, and they have been 
sent as often as the church needed, they make piti- 
ful details of the sorrows witnessed or experienced, 
and in glowing terms they set forth the relief expe- 
rienced there by the offerings of the living. 



32 PURGATORY. 

CHAPTER VI. 

VISITS FROM PURGATORY. 

A common method adopted by the priests to prove 
the existence of purgatory and to set forth the suffer- 
ings there endured, and so awaken the fears and 
sympathies of the living, was to pretend to certain 
intercommunications between the living and those in 
that dread place. The fiction of visits from it was a 
frequent and fruitful resort, as also visions, signs, ap- 
paritions, and dreams. 

The theory of the return of the dead from pur- 
gatory to hold intercourse with the living is thus 
set forth in words under the approbation of Arch- 
bishop Hughes: 

( i The souls in purgatory cannot, ordinarily speak- 
ing, at their own will or of their own power, appear 
among us with an assumed body, or one of air. . . . 
Yet by a particular and extraordinary dispensation 
and permission of the Lord, the souls of the dead are 
able, and are wont, to hold intercourse with the 
living. Many apparitions, at various successive 
times, confirm our opinion, which is also that of St. 
Thomas, who asserts that, according to the dispensa- 
tion of divine power they come from their abodes and 
present themselves to the sight of men, which is 
accorded to them," subjoins the holy doctor, for 



VISITORS FROM IT. 33 

others' sake, ( i in order to their being instructed and 
terrified; and for their own sake, that they may ask 
for spiritual succors. ' ' * 

Miiller, however, says that ' l those cases, in which 
some of them were permitted to appear to their friends 
and ask assistance, are but the exceptions. "f 

The case of Drithelm, the Englishman, quoted 
elsewhere, as related by Bede, is illustrative and 
instructive on this theory of returning spirits. It 
seems that Drithelm was permitted to resume his life 
in the body, while his fearful memories of what he 
had seen in purgatory came nigh to taking it away 
again. He took up his abode in the monastery of 
Mailross, where the austerity of his life amazed every 
one. " Sometimes he was seen plunged up to the 
neck in icy water, praying with incredible fervor. 
When he was asked how he could bear such extreme 
cold, he replied, with heart-rending sighs, ( Ah ! it is 
little compared to what I have seen.' When he 
macerated his body by unheard-of mortifications, his 
brethren said to him, l Why do you treat yourself so 
barbarously? In God's name, spare yourself a little.' 
But he replied, ' Ah ! I have seen far greater austeri- 
ties. The most bitter pains of this life are but as 
roses, if compared to those of purgatory, to which I 
shall be subjected if I do not expiate my faults here 
below.' "J 

* The Month of November, p. 18. 
t Miiller's Charity, etc., p. 40. 
} Ibid., pp. 37-39. 



34 PURGATORY. 

One would suppose that infancy and tender years 
might be exempt from the pains and horrors and 
loathsomeness of that intermediate region; yet Butler, 
in his L,ives, relates this incident. Dinocrates, a lad 
of seven years, had died, whose reappearance his 
sister, St. Perpetua, thus describes : " I saw Dinocrates 
coming out of a dark place, where there were many 
others, exceedingly hot and thirsty; his face was 
dirty, his complexion pale, with the ulcer in his face 
of which he died, and it was for him that I prayed. 
There seemed a great distance between him and me, 
so that it was impossible for us to come to each other. 
Near him stood a vessel full of water, whose brim was 
higher than the stature of an infant. He attempted 
to drink ; but though he had water, he could not reach 
it. ' ' She prayed for him with tears day and night, 
and afterward l ' saw the place, which had been dark 
before, now luminous; and Dinocrates, with his body 
very clean and well clad, refreshing himself, and 
instead of his wound a scar only."* 

We recognize at once the paganism of the legend, 
and prefer the more beautiful original in the classical 
story of Tantalus. 

Peter, abbot of Cluny, relates a thrilling and 
tragic incident. Blancus, abbot of St. Giles, had 
died, but returned one night, and meeting one of the 
monks of Cluny, implored the prayers and alms of 
the monastery, that he might be delivered from 
purgatory. The monk replied that probably no one 

* Butler's Lives of the Saints. March 7. 



VISITORS FROM IT. 35 

would believe the story, to which the dead abbot 
responded, ' l In order, then, that no one may donbt, 
you may assure them that within eight days you will 
die." 

The monk reported the next day, but was dis- 
credited ; and was soon taken sick, and died within 
the prescribed days. * 

A similar story is told of one of the cavalry of 
Charlemagne. When dying, he left his horse and 
equipments to a nephew, who was to sell the same 
and turn the proceeds into masses for the departed 
soul of his uncle. This he neglected to do, when his 
uncle reappeared to him from the land of spirits, up- 
braided him for his neglect, complained of his own 
terrible sufferings in consequence, and warned his 
nephew of a premature death, and peculiar sufferings 
in the middle state. The young man was soon taken 
off by a sudden death, f 

Nor do these messengers from the spirit land return 
singly. St. Frances of the Blessed Sacrament was 
thronged by them. "By day and by night these 
souls used to come to her cell in crowds, asking her 
charitable prayers. . . . Sometimes they appeared to 
her all surrounded with fire; at other times in forms 
as black as coal, from which sparks of fire were 
issuing." While she was assisting in the choir, they 
would await her return near the holy- water font, and 
follow her to her cell. ( ' She prayed for them almost 
unceasingly, had masses said, fasted on bread and 

* Miiller, pp. 69-71. f Ibid., pp. 92, 93. 



36 PURGATORY. 

water almost throughout the whole year, took the 
discipline for hours, offered up her communions, pains, 
privations of sleep, her fears, labors, troubles, anxie- 
ties, and all her steps, not reserving for herself as 
much as one breath. ' ' * 

A singular incident among the reappearances of 
the departed is said to have occurred in Paris in 1827. 
A poor servant-girl was accustomed to have mass said 
monthly for the souls in purgatory nearest to release 
and heaven. But she lost her health and place, and 
so became very poor. Barely able to walk, and with 
only one dollar, she went out in search of a new place 
for service. Going into a church to say her prayers, 
she was led to pay her last dollar for her accus- 
tomed monthly mass. Resuming her search, a tall, 
pale young man of noble demeanor met her with the 
remark, u My good girl, I think you are looking for a 
place. ' ' She assented. He directed her to a certain 
street and number, with the encouragement that she 
would find a good one. She met at the door the 
former domestic leaving in a pet. She informed the 
lady of the house by whom and how she had been 
directed to her house. The lady replied, ( l What you 
say is very strange. This morning I was not yet in 
need of a servant. I have only just now sent away 
an impudent servant that I had. Who could have 
sent you here?" The girl entered, and noticing a 
portrait on the wall, exclaimed, u That is the exact 
likeness of the young man who told me to come 

* Miiller, pp. 125-129. 



VISITORS FROM IT. 37 

here." The lady was greatly agitated, for that was 
the portrait of her son, who died two years before. 

On inquiry the girl told of her devotions, sickness, 
poverty, her last dollar, and the morning mass, when 
the lady threw her arms around her neck, saying, ' 4 It 
is my son, my darling son, that has appeared to you ; 
it is to you he owes his deliverance. You shall 
henceforward always remain with me, not as my 
servant, but as my daughter and my dear friend, and 
we shall always pray together for the poor suffering 
souls in purgatory. ' ' * 

There are striking features about this incident: a 
servant-girl, devout, poor, sick, out of employment, 
yet still devout beyond her last penny; the soul she 
has rescued appearing, giving her a place at the house 
of his own mother, where she is treated as a daugh- 
ter. Here is a rare combination of the spiritual, the 
heroic, the practical, and, for this kind of worship, 
the politic. And the story has this for its warrant: 
Imprimatur: Joannes Josephus, Bpiscopus. Boston, 
1872. 

Of these visits of returning spirits Bellarmine 
makes much use in proving and enforcing the notion 
of purgatory. The following are some that he ad- 
duces from the Lives of the Saints. 

"St. Gregory the Great writes that the soul of 
Paschasius appeared to St. Germanus, and testified 
to him that he was freed from the pains of purgatory 
for his prayers. n M Peter Damiani writes that St- 

* Miiller, pp. 104-109. 



38 PURGATORY. 

Severin appeared to a clergyman, and told him that 
he had been in purgatory for not having said the 
divine service at due hours, and that afterwards God 
had delivered him, and carried him to the company 
of the blessed. " "St Bernard writes that St. Mala- 
chy freed his sister from the pains of purgatory by 
his prayers, and that the same sister had appeared 
unto him, begging of him that relief and favor." 
"And St. Bernard himself, by his intercession, freed 
another who had suffered a whole year the pains of 
purgatory, as William, abbot, writes in his life." 
And the learned cardinal adds, "Many more might be 
cited, etc., but what we have quoted are the more 
authentic." 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 39 

CHAPTER VII. 

VISITS TO PURGATORY. 

But it is not always enough to receive a visit from 
a resident of that spirit realm. To some minds un- 
duly scientific, or philosophical, or variously inquis- 
itive, or given to the cross-questioning of witnesses, 
some doubts might linger as to the reality, personality, 
identity, and square, human honesty of the ghostly 
visitor. The ghost of Crugal, a chief who fell in 
fight, is a beautiful conception by Ossian : 

' ' Dim, and in tears, he stood and stretched his 
pale hand over the hero. Faintly he raised his 
feeble voice, like the gale of the reedy Lego: ( My 
spirit, Connal, is on my hills; my corse on the sands 
of Erin. Thou shalt never talk with Crugal, nor find 
his lone steps in the heath. I am light as the blast 
of Cromla. I move like the shadow of the mist ! Con- 
nal, son of Colgar, I see a cloud of death; it hovers 
dark over the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin 
must fall. Remove from the field of ghosts.' Like 
the darkened moon he retired, in the midst of the 
whistling blast. . . . The stars dim-twinkled through 
his form. His voice was like the sound of a dis- 
tant stream. He is a messenger of death ! He speaks 
of the dark and narrow house. ' ' * 

* Ossian's Fingal, Book II. 

Purgatory. j< 



4 o PURGATORY. 

All this is beautiful, grand, thrilling. We see and 
feel it all, as Connal lies there in the still night, on 
the heath of Lena, apart from his army, with a mossy 
stone for his pillow, and the mountain-stream mur- 
muring by. The figure of the ghost of Crugal is 
very distinct to our fancy, though dim and shadow T y. 
i { Dark is the wound of his breast, ' ' like the ulcer on 
the face of the boy Dinocrates, of which he died. Both 
are from the middle kingdom of souls, and very im- 
pressive in their testimony. Yet, as having passed 
from the mortal to the spirit land, we would not take 
their measurement of a load of wood, their affidavit to 
the signature of a note, or their testimony in a case of 
fifty dollars. When a witness moves to the stand like 
1 ( the shadow of a mist, J ' and when standing there 
"the stars dim-twinkle through his form," his testi- 
mony would ordinarily be received as thin. Moreover, 
such a witness could u retire like the darkened moon," 
before the opposing counsel had examined him, and 
ever after refuse to obey a subpoena. 

Perhaps Romanism met some of these difficulties 
on the part of thoughtful and inquiring minds as 
pertaining to ghostly witnesses alone concerning pur- 
gatory. Very likely there was a demand, that could 
not be resisted, for genuine flesh and blood witnesses. 
Hence we have the travels and sketches of that under 
realm from those who had not seen death. Their itin- 
eraries of purgatory, published on return, describing 
its mountains, valleys, and caves, volcanic lakes and 
icebergs, torments, grades of sorrow, alternate pains 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 41 

and joys, with the coming and going of the hosts of 
disembodied and yet corporate immortals, would make 
a small, fearful library. This unearthly spiritual lit- 
erature has been well managed in its materials and 
editing and circulation. Miiller's Charity for the 
Souls in Purgatory, so often quoted in this treatise, is 
a good illustration of the reproduction and modern 
issue of this kind of literature. 

Sometimes the priest himself, or some well-known 
saint, would make the tour of those purgatorial regions, 
through the special favor of God, and return with de- 
tailed accounts. Sometimes one of the honored dead, 
widely known, would be found, after his death, to 
have made the visit in his lifetime, and so divulged 
the coveted information to his monastery, to be pub- 
lished after his real and final departure. 

In this way the hierarchy were able to make this 
part of their spiritual machinery work with a terrible 
power. For by the aid of these messengers to these 
regions they could, as they had need, describe mi- 
nutely the different apartments of the place, the differ- 
ent kinds, modes, and degrees of punishment, the con- 
dition and prospects of certain individuals known to 
the living and declared to be there, and the effects of 
the offerings and prayers of the church for them. So 
by this fiction of intercommunication the priests could 
make any use they pleased of the hopes and fears of 
their people ; while their pretended knowledge of the 
pains and wants of friends detained there, and of the 
efficacy of alms and prayers for them, gave them an in- 



42 PURGATORY. 

conceivable power over the living, through the common 
and so strong principles of natural love and friendship. 

For if money, penance, or prayers would alleviate 
or shorten the sufferings of any loved one in that place 
of painful purification, who would not grant either, 
and to any possible amount ? 

In time these feigned visits became historic mate- 
rial in the hands of the clergy, and so were a kind of 
funded historical and doctrinal treasure, from which 
they could draw as need required. 

It being known that such intercommunication was 
possible, there followed visits direct to the place, and 
information more and more minute concerning it and 
its inmates and their sufferings was gradually spread 
abroad. An example found in Bellarmine, already 
partially quoted, should not be omitted : ( ( One Dri- 
thelm, during a visit to the spiritual world, was led 
on his journey by an angel in shining raiment, and 
proceeded, in the company of his guide, towards the 
rising sun. The travellers at length arrived in a val- 
ley of vast dimensions. This region to the left was 
covered with roasting furnaces, and to the right with 
icy cold, hail and snow. The whole valley was filled 
with human souls, which a tempest seemed to toss in 
all directions. The unhappy spirits, unable in the 
one part to bear the violent heat, leaped into the shiv- 
ering cold, which again drove them into the scorching 
flames which cannot be extinguished. 

u A numberless multitude of deformed souls were 
in this manner whirled about and tormented without 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 43 

intermission in the extremes of alternate heat and 
cold. This, according to the angelic conductor who 
piloted Drithelm, is the place of chastisement for such 
as defer confession and amendment till the hour of 
death. »* 

The Vision of Charles the Bald, or, according to 
some, of Charles the Fat, is of the same general tenor. 
These Visions and Tours of Purgatory are of course 
but the wildest fancies of private authors. Yet we 
have reason to suppose that they are a fair reflection of 
the popular faith and feelings concerning this doctrine, 
and hence they find properly a place in the exposition 
of it. 

This Charles wore crown in the last half of the 
ninth century. He was led by an angel through the 
spirit world, being guided and protected by a brilliant 
flaming thread that his conductor held. Thus pro- 
gressing, he passed through deep valleys of fire, filled 
with pits of sulphur, lead, pitch, and oil. In these 
pits turbulent bishops were punished. Black fiends 
gathered about him to cast him in, but his guide and 
thread saved him. 

" My conductor, who carried the ball, wound about 
my shoulder a doubled thread, drawing me to him with 
such force that we ascended high mountains of flame, 
from whence issued lakes and burning streams, melt- 
ing all kinds of metals. 

" There I found the souls of lords who had served 

* This legend, with variations, is found in many old Romish authors. 
Its earliest appearance is probablv in Bede, who died A. D. yjt. 

5* 



44 PURGATORY. 

xny father and my brothers, some plunged up to the 
hair of their heads, others to their chins, others with 
half their bodies immersed. . . . While I was timidly 
bending over their sufferings I heard at my back the 
clamor of voices \ Potentes potentertormentapatiuntur. e . . 
I looked up and beheld on the shores boiling streams 
and ardent furnaces, blazing with pitch and sulphur, 
full of great dragons, large scorpions, and serpents of 
a strange species; where also I saw some of my ances- 
tors, princes, and my brothers also. . . . Leading me 
there securely, we descended into a great valley, which 
on one side was dark, except where lighted by ardent 
furnaces, while the amenity of the other was so splen- 
did that I cannot describe it." 

On this pleasant side he finally discovers two foun- 
tains, one scalding and one temperate. "The lumi- 
nous thread rested on the one of the fervid waters, 
where I saw my father Lewis, covered to his thighs, 
and though laboring in the anguish of bodily pain, he 
spoke to me, c My son Charles, fear nothing. I know 
that thy spirit shall return unto thy body, and God has 
permitted thee to come here that thou mayest witness 
the punishments I endure because of the sins I have 
committed. One day I am placed in the boiling bath 
of this large vessel, and on another changed into that 
of more temperate waters. This I owe to the prayers 
of St. Peter, St. Denis, and St. Remy, who are the 
patron saints of our royal house. But if by prayers 
and masses, offerings and alms, psalmody and vigils, 
my faithful bishops and abbots, and even all the eccle- 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 



45 



siastical order assist ine, it will not be long before I 
am deliverd from these boiling waters. Look at your 
left. ' I looked, and beheld two tuns of boiling waters. 
( These are prepared for thee,' he said, 4 if thou wilt 
not be thine own corrector, and do penance for thy 
crimes. ' M * 

In his Treatise on Purgatory Bellarmine introduces 
this personal narrative of St. Christina: 

i ' Immediately after I departed from the body my 
soul was received by ministers of light and angels of 
God, and conducted to a dark and horrid place, filled 
with the souls of men. The torments which I there 
witnessed are so dreadful that to attempt to describe 
them would be utterly in vain. And there I beheld not 
a few who had been known to me while they were alive. 

" Greatly concerned for their hapless state, I asked 
what place it was, thinking it was hell. But I was 
told that it was purgatory, where are kept those who 
in their life had repented indeed of their sins, but had 
not paid the punishment due for them. I was next 
taken to see the torments of hell, where also I recog- 
nized some of my former acquaintances upon earth. 

11 Afterwards I was translated into Paradise, even 
to the throne of the divine Majesty; and when I saw 
the Lord congratulating me, I was beyond measure re- 
joiced, concluding, of course, that I should hencefor- 

* This Vision in varied forms may be found in D'Israeli's Curiosities 
of Literature, under "Dante's Inferno," as quoted from the ancient 
chronicles of St. Denis, and also in St. Patrick's Purgatory, p. 20, and 
111 William of Malmesbury's History that ends with A. D. 1143. 



46 PURGATORY. 

ward dwell with him for evermore. But he presently 
said to me, ( In very deed, my sweetest daughter, here 
you shall be with me; but for the present I offer you 
your choice. Will you stay for ever with me now ? or 
will you return to the earth, and there in your mortal 
body, but without any detriment to it, endure punish- 
ments by which you may deliver out of purgatory all 
those souls whom you so much pitied; and may also, 
by the sight of your penance and the example of your 
life, be a means of converting to me some who are yet 
alive in the body, and so come again to me at last 
with a great increase of your merits ?' 

"I accepted, without hesitation, the return to life, 
on the condition proposed; and the L^ord, congratula- 
ting me on the promptitude of my obedience, ordered 
that my body should be restored to me. 

( ' And here I had an opportunity of admiring the 
incredible celerity of the blessed spirits; for, in that 
very hour, having been placed before the throne of 
God at the first recital of the Agnus Dei, in the mass 
which was said for me, at the third my body was 
restored. This is an account of my death, and return 
to life. » 

The author of her life then narrates that "she 
walked into burning ovens, and though she was so 
tortured by the flames that her anguish extorted from 
her the most horrible cries, yet when she came out 
there was not a trace of any burning to be detected on 
her body. Again, during a hard frost she would go 
and place herself under the frozen surface of a river 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 47 

for six days and more at a time. Sometimes she 
would be carried round by the wheel of a water- 
mill, with the water of the river, and having been 
whirled round in a horrible manner she was as 
whole in body as if nothing had happened to her; 
not a limb w r as hurt. At another time she would 
make all the dogs in the town fall upon her, and 
would run before them like a hunted beast. And yet, 
in spite of being torn by thorns and brambles, and 
worried and lacerated by the dogs to such a degree 
that no part of her body escaped without wounds, 
there was not a weal nor scar to be seen. ' ' 

By these terrible sufferings, endured voluntarily, 
she redeemed out of purgatory the souls of those 
whom she so much loved. l l And this not for a few 
days, but for forty-two years, during which she con- 
tinued alive after her resurrection. ' ' * 

The experience of Catharine of Raconisio is so 
peculiar, and throws so much light on the interior 
and more spiritual life of a devout Roman-catholic, 
that we must not omit a passage from it. 

" Once when lying in bed tormented with a violent 
pain, she set herself to meditate on the greater 
flames of purgatory, when she was rapt in spirit so as 
to see them. Then the Lord, in order that she might 
be the more moved to compassion towards these 
souls, willed not only that she should gase with her 

* Book II. chap. 9. De Gemitu Columbas. Translation from Man- 
ual of Romish Controversy. By the Rev. R. P. Blakeney, LL. D., pp. 
159-160. T. Nelson & Sons, Edinburgh. 



48 PURGATORY. 

eyes upon their pains, but that she should have exper- 
imental proof of them. And so, while she stood 
absorbed in contemplation, a single spark of this fire 
darted out, and lighted upon her left cheek. So keen 
was the pain she felt from it, that her face soon swelled 
up, and the pain lasted several days, and was such 
that she confessed that, compared with this agony, the 
pains of this life were a mere nothing. From this 
time there arose in her a burning desire to extend 
suffrages to those souls with every kind of penance; 
and she offered herself to her Saviour, to suffer with 
all readiness every affliction of the soul or toil of the 
body, to liberate them from such cruel torments. And 
forthwith she not only commenced a most rigorous 
life, but was often taken with various pains of the 
greatest severity, and by this she earned a vision 
from time to time of many souls going forth from 
purgatory and flying to heaven by her means. ' ' * 

These narratives of tours to and in and from pur- 
gatory, by which the papal doctrines are most power- 
fully taught, are sometimes exceedingly interesting, 
as showing the intelligence of the masses for whom 
they are published, and the power of adaptation on 
the part of their teachers. The following is a good 
illustration. 

"It is related of a religious of St. Dominic that 
finding himself at the point of death, he earnestly 
begged a friend who was a priest to be pleased, as 
soon as he was dead, to offer the sacrifice of the mass 

* Month of November, pp. 44, 45. 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 49 

for a suffrage for his soul. He had scarce expired 
when the priest went to the church, and celebrated 
with devotion for the soul of his deceased friend. 
When the sacrifice was done, he had hardly taken off 
the sacred vestments when the deceased religious 
presented himself to him, and rebuked him severely 
for his hardness of heart in leaving him in the most 
cruel fire of purgatory for the long space of thirty 
years. ' How thirty years ?' answered the good priest, 
all astonishment 4 why, it is not yet an hour since you 
left this life, so that your corpse is, so to say, still 
warm. ' To this the dead man replied, l L,earn hence, 
my friend, how tormenting is the fire of purgatory, 
when barely an hour seems to be thirty years ; and 
learn to have pity, too, upon us. n * 

Yet this little manual of private devotion, this 
Daily Food for the devout papist through the month 
of November, is a publication of this century ! It was 
issued in New York in 1855, not in Old York in 1055, 
and is ' c approbated ' ' by Archbishop Hughes ! 

Some of the causes that assign those ancient saints 
to such terrible sufferings are singular. 4 c The vener- 
able Ivudovico Blosio, a great master of spiritual life, 
and of equal learning, relates that a devout servant of 
God, whom he was well acquainted with and loved, 
had it granted him to see a departed soul all surrounded 
with flames, and he gave him to understand that he 
was deprived of the beatific vision of God for having 
received the Saviour under the sacramental species 

* Month of November, pp. 51, 52. 



50 PURGATORY. 

without being duly prepared; and that he lay im- 
mersed in burning flames for having come with culpa- 
ble tepidity to the eucharistic table. ' ' * 

Were the following found in some black-letter 
quarto, or monastic and mediaeval manuscript, we 
should not think it worth transcribing, or presume to 
hold any living man to its sentiment; but it has its 
place in a devotional book recently published, and 
under the " approbation " of an American archbishop. 
What can we think of a religious body in which such 
statements are published in all sincerity and received 
in all confidence ? 

One Catharine, a devout convert, "took especial 
delight in the devotion of the Rosary, reciting it de- 
voutly more than once in the day, and applying it 
wholly, or in part, as a suffrage for the souls in purga- 
tory. Now the Lord, to show how great relief to these 
souls such a devotion was, made known to the afore- 
said saint in writing that, while Catharine one day 
was reciting a third part of the Rosary for the dead, 
meditating the while on the mysteries of the passion, 
there gushed from the limbs of a most beautiful infant, 
who represented our Lord Jesus Christ, fifty-five foun- 
tains, just the number of the Aves and Pater-nosters 
which compose a third part of the Rosary; which sent 
forth in great abundance most clear waters, which all 
fell into purgatory, and refreshed the tormented souls 
so much that they seemed no longer to have any sense 
of pain. And at this, voices, all of joy, mounted up, 

* Month of November, p. 78. 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 51 

thanking and blessing Catharine, their pious benefac- 
tor. Oh, how much to be praised are those families 
who join every evening in reciting together the Ro- 
sary, as a suffrage for the souls in purgatory ! n * 

It is very gratifying to find, now and then, among 
these purgatorial incidents of devout authors some that 
take a very practical turn; and if they are believed by 
the living, they must tend to make better men. The 
following is a sample, given on the authority of Ben- 
edict XIII. : 

1 1 A brother who belonged to the order of preach- 
ing friars related that his father, a very powerful and 
wealthy lord, availed himself of the services of a cer- 
tain farrier to shoe his horses, to whom, when he died, 
he was a debtor to a certain amount for his labor; and 
his work had been done several years before that 
time. 

"When he was dead, he appeared to a certain 
faithful servant of his, and, holding in his hand a 
hammer and a farrier's tongs with some red-hot horse- 
shoes, 'Go,' said he, 'and beg my wife to be so good 
as to pay off the debt for which I am suffering here in 
purgatory. ' 

" The pious woman did so, satisfying not only the 
demands of the aforesaid farrier, but those of all her 
husband's other creditors. "f 

This is certainly a novel way of settling accounts; 
and if communication with that middle state were free 
and open, doubtless many truthful and profitable mes- 

* Month of November, pp. 81, 82. t Ibid., pp. 115, 116. 

Purgatory, (J 



52 PURGATORY. 

sages could be forwarded to the heirs of some Protes- 
tant estates left deeply in debt and said to be insol- 
vent. 

Herein is a grim hint at justice. If all the unpaid 
bills due to honest and hard-working mechanics are 
thus worked out in the lower world by deceased debt- 
ors, purgatory must be a busy and a noisy place. Not a 
few, who passed through this life easily and on credit, 
will find themselves for the first time at work and 
earning their own living. This feature of the papal 
purgatory, it must be confessed, has a look quite utili- 
tarian for a Protestant. 

It is interesting to study the workings of this papal 
system of purgatorial suffering, and note the causes 
that expose and condemn to it. Sometimes the cause 
is ritual, canonical, and apparently quite trivial; but 
in other instances it lies in the injury of the vital 
structure of good society, or in the infringement of the 
fundamental principles of good morals. We make a 
condensed statement of several cases, gathered miscel- 
laneously from the authors already quoted. 

One has yet ten years more to serve in his iron 
and burning armor for having injured the reputation 
of another; another, for having recited the canonical 
hours hurriedly; another, for having kept some money 
without permission; another, for obstinacy in refusing 
to submit to the will of others; another, for too great 
familiarity with merely worldly men; another, for 
neglect of penance. 

When such pretended knowledge of the spirit land 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 53 

is faithfully spread abroad through a community and 
among a people who believe it most profoundly, the 
fiction exercises a power inconceivable. For when 
one believes that his precious dead are broiling, roast- 
ing, buffeting the surges of a lake of fire, or freezing 
in more than polar cold, and all because his alms and 
prayers are withheld, what will he not do? In a 
homily preserved in the Bodleian library, Oxford, 
written probably in the eleventh century, are found 
these words: "Some are there long, some a little 
while, according to what their friends do for them 
here in life. ' ' * 

These old words give us an insight into the nature 
and utility of the doctrine. It is thus made an engine 
of terrible power. If monarch or peasant be refrac- 
tory, if the wealthy be too close in his contributions, 
if the negligent sinner omit any rite profitable or cour- 
teous to the church, if the dying remember not with 
sufficient liberality the church and chair of St. Peter, 
the fires of purgatory are flashed in his face. If a de- 
ceased one leave wealthy relatives, it is soon known 
that the departed is in need of many and expensive 
masses for the repose of his soul. 

Dr. England well states the practical utility of this 
intercommunication with the middle land: "They 
who are in this state of purgation are still members of 
the church, and may, therefore, be aided by our prayers 

* St. Patrick's Purgatory : an Essay on the Legends of purgatory, 
Hell, and Heaven, current during the Middle Ages. By Thomas Wright, 
Esq., M. A., F. S. A., etc. London, 1844. P. 25. 



54 PURGATORY. 

and sacrifices; and hence from the days of the apos- 
tles commemoration was made for them in the 
mass."* 

In a family known to the writer five hundred dol- 
lars were thus expended in masses for the soul of the 
husband and father. When O'Connell died, collec- 
tions were taken extensively in the churches that his 
soul might be hastened and eased through purgatory. 
When Bishop Fenwick of Baltimore, and De Neker of 
New Orleans, had been long dead, and it could be 
hoped at rest, as good bishops are expected to be when 
they die, high mass was celebrated, and at great ex- 
pense, for the repose of their souls. 

Says Rockwell, in his " Foreign Travels and Life 
at Sea," " In that part of Spain where I have spent 
the last month (near Madrid and in it), the common 
price of a mass is twenty-five cents; but the people are 
taught that the more they pay above this sum, the 
more influence the mass will have in delivering souls 
from the pains of purgatory. " "When last in Naples 
I purchased a large supply of Catholic tracts, many of 
which are in poetry, and have awful pictures of the 
day of judgment, purgatory, and other matters, with 
horrid-looking devils thrusting pitchforks through the 
poor wretches who have fallen into their power. One 
of the most curious tracts I have met with, however, 
is a letter from souls in purgatory to those living on 
earth, asking for alms to be given to the priests to hire 
them fo chant masses for the benefit of the poor sufier- 

* Garden of the Soul, Explanation of the Mass, p. 64. 



VISITS TO PURGATORY. 55 

ers in those lower regions. ' ' * And it is not long since 
that Sir Culling Eardly Smith stated at a public meet- 
ing in London, that an Indian Begum, mother of Col. 
Dyce Sombre, had paid several thousand pounds for a 
single mass for the repose of her soul when she should 
leave the body. 

A volume of these visits from and to purgatory, 
and of these visions, might be gathered; but we have 
introduced enough for the purpose in hand. As mir- 
rors of the common belief of the times in which they 
originated, they give a fair idea of the religious senti- 
ments then held. Yet, where such representations are 
believed, we can form but faint conceptions of the 
priestly power. If one believes in the reality of these 
sufferings, and that his father confessor has power to 
abate them, the circle of his personal liberty is narrow. 
Yet for substance they were believed. Says Bellar- 
mine, 4 ' Poenas Purgatorii esse atrocissimas, et cum 
illis nullas poenas hujus vitae comparandas, docent 
constanter patres. ' ' f 

* Foreign Travels and Life at Sea, vol. V., pp. 305, 310, 311. 

t " The fathers strongly affirm that the pains of purgatory are exceed- 
ingly severe, and cannot come in comparison with any of the sufferings of 
this life." 



6* 



56 PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 

We come now to consider the radical, pivotal force 
of the papal system. In her Theory of Indulgences 
are the hidings of power in the Roman - catholic 
Church. 

According to the Papacy every sin has a certain 
amount of penalty attached to it, as by weight or 
measure. We can, if we will, bear and exhaust that 
penalty in this life by penance. But if we neglect 
penance, or for any reason die before we have met the 
full penalty due our sins, we must endure the balance 
in purgatory. This is said of true Christians, and not 
of unregenerate persons. And repentance does not 
stay this definite penalty. It must be visited on the 
sinner here or in purgatory, whether he has repented 
and is forgiven and justified of God or not. But some 
very good men, as prophets, apostles, martyrs, and 
eminent saints, not only meet the full debt of penalty 
that they owe, but they do and suffer more than is 
demanded of them in justice. When they die there is 
a surplus of good works, or merit, standing to their 
account. They do not need it. They go at once to 
heaven. This surplus of merit constitutes a kind of 
church fund of merit. It is united with the merits of 
Christ, and is held in trust b3' the church to be dis- 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 57 

pensed at her option to those who have died debtors to 
justice and unvisited penalty, and so are in purgatory. 
Or one while in life may do more good works than 
God demands, and the value of these will be put to his 
credit. He may voluntarily suffer beyond any per- 
sonal demerits, and the value of all such pains will 
also be put to his credit, all which will stand in his 
name and favor, like a surplus in a bank account, and 
he may check it out in orders in favor of whom he 
will. This fund of merit, made up by the dead and 
the living, Miiller calls ' ' the treasures of the church, ' ' * 
and the Council of Trent "the heavenly treasures of 
the church, "f A draft on this fund, and the applica- 
tion of it for the relief of any soul in purgatory, is an 
Indulgence. 

If, for example, the penalty yet to be endured be 
ten years in purgatory, the priest, for a consideration, 
grants the application of so much merit from this fund 
as is equivalent to those ten years of purgatorial sor- 
row. Sometimes the indulgence is plenary, that is, it 
covers all and every demand on the individual for pun- 
ishment. If that person be in purgatory, the result of 
this plenary indulgence is his immediate release, and 
departure for heaven. Or, as Teteel is said to have 
expressed it, " The very moment the money jingles in 
the chest, the soul for whom it is paid escapes from 
the pains of purgatory and flies to heaven." 

The dispensation of this fund is also accommodated 
to the living. One knowing his crimes ascertains the 

* Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 143. t Sess. XXL, ch. 9. 



58 PURGATORY. 

purgatorial penalty due, and buys himself off in ad- 
vance of death, and so opens his way clear and direct 
to heaven. Not only so, but so accommodating and 
gracious a management is made of the fund, that one, 
for a price, can buy himself off from punishment for 
any particular sin that he may yet commit, or intends 
to commit, or even from the sins of all his future life. * 

1 { God has left in his church the power of granting 
indulgences, and indulgences are extremely advanta- 
geous to the Christian people. n f 

1 ' Indulgences in themselves contain all the treas- 
ures of the merits of Jesus Christ, the most blessed 
Virgin, and the Saints, so that they are distributed 
only by the authority of the Pope and of the bishops, 
for the sole end of giving to divine justice the satisfac- 
tion due in punishment for our sins. "J 

That this is the theory of Indulgences, as held by 
the Roman-catholic Church, a few citations of author- 
ity will make evident. They hold that a definite 
amount of suffering, as a penalty, is due, and must.be 

* This application of an indulgence to future sins, either intended or 
unforeseen, is denied by many good papal authorities. Yet its practice 
cannot be denied, as we shall show. We present both sides historically, 
the practice and the denial, and leave the church, that claims immutabil- 
ity and infallibility in the fundamentals of doctrine and of usage, to adjust 
the discrepancies. 

t Keenan's Doctrinal Catechism, p. 153. Approved by the Most Rev. 
John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Dunigan & Brother, 
New York, 1855. 

% Purgatory Opened to the Piety of the Faithful, or The Month of 
November Consecrated to the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. With 
the approbation of the Most Rev. John Hughes, Archbishop of New 
York. P. 97. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1855. 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 59 

endured or met, for every sin, and that the forgiveness 
and justification of God do not dispense with this pen- 
alty. So the Council of Trent: 

"If any one shall say, that after the grace of justi- 
fication received, unto every penitent sinner the guilt 
is so remitted, and the penalty of eternal punishment so 
blotted out, that there remains not any penalty of tem- 
poral punishment to be discharged, either in this world, 
or in the next in purgatory, before the entrance to the 
kingdom of heaven can be laid open, let him be anath- 
ema. ) ' * 

To the same import is the exposition of the Ursu- 
line Manual. An indulgence u is a releasing of the 
temporal punishments which remain due to sin al- 
ready pardoned. These temporal punishments God 
inflicts on sinners whose crimes he has forgiven, in 
the same manner as a good parent punishes a child to 
give him a horror of his fault, and prevent him 
again relapsing into the same. This punishment, 
which remains due to sinners whose crimes have been 
forgiven, is suffered either in this world by sickness, 
pains of mind or body, loss of goods, or voluntary 
penances, or else in the next world by the fire of 
purgatory, and it is from the necessity of that atone- 
ment that an indulgence dispenses, "f 

In The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, this 

* Buckley's Trans., Sess. 6, ch. 16, Canon 30. 

t "The Ursuline Manual, or a Collection of prayers, etc., for forming 
youth to the practice of solid piety; arranged for the Young Ladies 
educated at the Ursuline Convent, Cork." P. 165. 



60 PURGATORY. 

article on indulgences stands thus: " I affirm that the 
power of indulgences was left by Christ in the church, 
and that the use of them is most wholesome to Chris- 
tian people."* 

And that the Church of Rome in her theory of 
indulgences holds to a fund of merit, as above stated, 
is evident from all her defenders who speak on this 
topic. Says L,eo XII. in his Jubilee Bull of 1824, 
" We have resolved, by virtue of the authority given 
to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure 
composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of 
Christ our L,ord, and of his virgin mother, and of all 
the saints, which the Author of human salvation has 
entrusted to our dispensation. " 

Or take certain inscriptions found in the churches 
of Rome, which are but posted advertisements of what 
can be obtained and done in those churches. On a 
marble slab in the chapel in St. Mary Major is the 
following: . . . " We grant and indulge in perpetuity 
that whensoever any priest, secular, or of any regular 
order, shall at the aforesaid altar celebrate a mass for the 
dead, for thesoulof any one of the faithful, which, joined 
to God in charity, shall have passed from this life, the 
same soul shall obtain indulgence by means of suffrage 
from the treasure of the church; so that obtaining the 
suffrages of the merits of the same our Lord Jesus 
Christ, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the 

* The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, contained in the Profession of 
Faith published by Pope Pius IX., p. 69. Dunigan & Brother. New 
York, 1855. 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 61 

saints, it may be freed from the pains of purgatory, 
anything to the contrary notwithstanding. Given at 
Rome, at St. Mary Major, under the seal of the fisher- 
man, 19th of August, 1 61 3, ninth year of our Pontifi- 
cate. ' ' This perpetual grant was made by Paul V. * 

In the Church of St. Sebastian, and at the entrance 
to u the Catacombs" in it, is the following: u In this 
most sacred place which is called, ( At the Catacombs, ' 
where were buried the bodies of 174,000 holy martyrs 
and of 46 High Pontiffs, likewise martyrs," etc. 
Then on the opposite side of the church, cut in marble 
is this: " Whosoever, contrite and confessed, shall 
have entered it [the Catacombs] shall obtain plenary 
remission of all his sins, through the merits of the 
174,000 Holy Martyrs," etc. f 

Moreover drafts may be made on this fund of merit 
for particular persons. ' l The mass and prayers and 
the other good works, although in some measure they 
are common to all, nevertheless they profit much more 
those for whom they are made in particular than the 
others. "J 

In the Church of St. Lawrence at Rome, there is 
on a marble slab a grant in perpetuity that whenever 
a mass is there celebrated ( ( for the liberation of one soul 
existing in purgatory, the same soul shall, from the 
treasure of the church, the merits of the same of our 

* Romanism as it exists at Rome. By the Hon, J. W. Percy. London, 
1847. Pp. 12, 13. 

t Ibid., pp. 27, 28. 

% Christian Doctrine. A Manual of Faith in common use at Rome. 
See Percy, ut supra, pp. 9, 14, 15. 



62 PURGATORY. 

Lord Jesus Christ and all his saints, obtain the same 
indulgences and remissions of sins by the acceptance 
of divine clemency, and the said mass shall operate 
for the liberation of the same for which it shall be 
celebrated," etc.* 

This perpetual grant for that church was made by 
Gregory XIII. And thus high mass was celebrated 
for O'Connell and Bishops Fenwick and De Neker in 
particular. 

The indulgences thus obtained may be plenary or 
limited, according to contract, price and circumstances. 
A common inscription on the entrances to many of 
the churches at Rome is, "Indulgentia plenaria, per- 
petua et quotidiana, pro vivis et defunctis." "A 
partial indulgence, ' ' says the Ursuline Manual, ' c such 
as of ten years, or a hundred days, or forty days, 
dispenses from as much of the temporal punishment 
due to sin as would be remitted by ten years, a 
hundred days, or forty days of the canonical penances 
formerly imposed on sinners, "f And so we find en 
these marble slabs and in papal books of faith and 
of devotion definite remissions, thus: Nicolas IV. 
granted to those who should visit the Church of St. 
John Lateran, indulgence for " three years and three 
quarantines" to those living in the vicinage, "five 
years and five quarantines" to Tuscans, Apulians 
and Lombards, and "seven years and seven quaran- 



* Percy, i, 2. 

t Ursuline Manual, p. 166. 



THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 63 

tines " to those beyond the Alps and the sea.* In 
1836 Gregory XVI. granted an " Indulgence of 200 
days n to any one who would visit the image of the 
Blessed Virgin in the Church of St. Maria Sopra Mi- 
nerva. In another part of the church is this inscription 
in marble : ' ' The first Friday after Easter is the Station 
with Indulgence of 14,000 years." As you leave St. 
Paul's you read thus: "Kissing devoutly the most 
Holy Cross in any place gains one year and 40 days 
of Indulgence by concession of the Chief Pontiffs, 
John XXII. and Clement VI." In the Church of St. 
Dominic at Naples there hangs a long list "of the 
Indulgences of the most Holy Rosary," which con- 
cludes thus three chapters: "By the series of the 
above mentioned Indulgences, it is to be observed, 
that every brother, by the sole recital of the Rosary 
can gain even hundreds of thousands of Indulgences 
every day, besides the Plenary Indulgence several 
times in the year."f 

Sometimes the length of the indulgence is uncer- 
tain from its very conditions. For example, in the 
( ' Hours of the Blessed Virgin, ' ' as quoted by Stopford, 
we find the following: " Pope John XXII. granted to 
all that say this following prayer as they pass through 
any churchyard or place of burial so many years of 
pardon as there are bodies buried in it. c God save all 
faithful souls whose bodies rest here, and everywhere 
in the dust. ' ' ' etc. % 

* Percy, p. 34. t Ibid., pp. 45, 46, 48, 68. 

X Pagano-Papismus : or, An Exact Parallel between Rome-Pagan and 

Purgatory. 7 



64 PURGATORY. 

At the entrance of the Church of St. Saviour de 
Thernis, cut in marble, is the following notice : 

1 ' St. Gregory, Pope, and doctor of the church, con- 
secrated this church in the honor of the holy Saviour, 
and conceded to all, truly penitent and confessed, visit- 
ing it on each day, seven years and the same number 
of quarantines; on each day, however, of Lent plenary 
indulgence. Afterwards Sylvester, Gregory and Nic- 
olas, Roman Pontiffs, also conceded to strangers devout- 
ly visiting this church plenary indulgence; and lastly, 
as well the aforesaid as other Roman Pontiffs con- 
ceded to those visiting it at the time of Lent two 
thousand two hundred and sixty years; but on each 
day of the whole year eleven hundred and thirty 
years of indulgence. ' ' 

Near the door of this church, on the street, and in 
marble, is this advertisement also: " Indulgences con- 
ceded in perpetuity by high Pontiffs, in this church. 
Every day of the year there are twelve hundred and 
thirty years of indulgence; for all Lent there is ple- 
nary indulgence: for the pilgrims there is every day 
plenary indulgence."* 

In the Chapel of St. Helen, and on parchment, 
this was suspended while Percy was in Rome in the 
years 1843, 1844 and 1846. 

"On the Second Sunday of Advent there is the 

Rome-Christian in their Doctrines and Ceremonies. By Joshua Stopford, 
B. D., Rector of All Saints, in the City of York, 1675, P« IJ 6* London, 
J. Hatchard & Son, 1844. 
* Percy, pp. 48, 49. 



THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 65 

station, and eleven thousand years of indulgence, and 
the remission of all sins. " * ' 

So in another thus: " Gregory I. granted to all 
and each one visiting this Church of Sts. Cosmo and 
Damian one thousand years of indulgence, and on 
the day of the station of the same church, the same 
Gregory granted ten thousand years of indulgence. " f 

In the Church of St. Dominic, at Naples, Percy 
made copies of these among other inscriptions: 

u Whoever recites the third part of the Rosary 
gains forty days' indulgence. More, other five years, 
and as many quarantines. More, sixty thousand 
years, and as many quarantines of penances enjoined." 
" Whoever carries about him the Holy Rosary, one 
hundred years, and as many quarantines of indul- 
gences of the penances enjoined." J 

These marble and parchment advertisements of 
indulgences, copied off by Mr. Percy, carry up the 
time for which one may buy off himself or a friend in 
purgatory from canonical punishments, into scores of 
thousands of years. He says he might have much in- 
creased the collection, "but it would be useless to 
fatigue the reader with any more."§ 

The Rev. Henry Alford, D. D., Dean of Canter- 
bury, visiting Rome some time after Mr. Percy was 
there, says: 

"One's mind is perfectly confounded with the 
vastness of the numbers of years which may be gained 

* Percy, p. 50. t Ibid, p. 51. 

% Ibid., p. 67. § Ibid., 53, 54. 



66 PURGATORY. 

by any worshipper on solemn occasions; indeed, on 
every day of his life. By visiting the church of Santa 
Croce in Gerusalemme on the Second Snnday in Ad- 
vent may be gained ' eleven thousand years of indul- 
gence and the remission of all one's sins. ' By visiting 
the Church of Saints Cosmo and Damian, in the Forum, 
any day, one thousand years, and on the station at 
the same church ten thousand years. By kissing the 
foot of the idol in St. Agostino once in every day, one 
hundred days' indulgence may be gained. So that 
if a devout Roman chose to pass in his walk, every 
day for a year, these last two churches, he might gain 
at St. Agostino thirty-six thousand five hundred, and 
at Saints Cosmo and Damian, three hundred and 
sixty-five thousand years' remission of purgatory; in 
all four hundred and one thousand five hundred years 
for every year of his life, by these two churches only." 

It was not straining a papal truth, therefore, when 
Pope Innocent said, i l So many and so numerous are 
the indulgences of the L,ateran Church, that they 
cannot in any wise be numbered but by God alone, all 
of which I myself confirm. ' * 

Much business tact is shown in securing visits to 
these churches, and no little shrewdness in advertising 
the spiritual wares offered within; as over the door of 
the chapel Domine quo Vadis this little poster was 
hung: 

" Stop, O traveller, and enter into this holy tem- 
ple, for you will find there the footprint and image of 
our Lord Jesus Christ when he met with St. Peter, 



THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 67 

who was flying from prison. Alms are requested for 
wax and oil for the liberation of some soul from pur- 
gatory. " This advertising leaflet was withdrawn in 

1845.* 

The thing is better done thus in the Chapel of St. 
Mary of the Ladder: 

" In this temple, while St. Bernard was celebrating 
the Sacrifice of the Mass, he beheld the ladder where 
descending and ascending angels bore souls to heaven. 
From hence it happened that that holy place, before 
dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God, was called St. 
Mary of the Ladder, and Roman Pontiffs granted in- 
dulgences; so that, by the oblation of the divine Sac- 
rifice, souls might be redeemed from the pains of pur- 
gatory. " f 

When it is the purpose of the devout one visiting 
any church to offer prayer for an indulgence for him- 
self or for some one, known or unknown, in purgatory, 
a prescribed form of prayer is necessary. These forms 
of prayer may be purchased at the book-stores, though 
they are found framed and hanging in the most of the 
churches. They are in different languages and of 
great variety, and are addressed to the Saviour, to the 
Virgin, or to the Saints, to suit the varied necessities 
and fancies of the worshippers. 

There is other tact, as well as in advertising, in 
disposing of these indulgences. They have at Rome 
a fac simile imprint of the sole of the shoe of the Vir- 
gin. On this is printed, among other matter, this: 

* Percy, p. 57. f ibid., p. 29. 



68 PURGATORY. 

" The Pontiff John XXII. conceded three hundred 
years' indulgence to whomsoever shall three times kiss 
this measure, and at the same time recite three Ave 
Marias; the which also was confirmed by Pope Clem- 
ent VIII. , the year of our redemption 1603. • • • This 
indulgence may be applied to the souls in purgatory. 
And it is permitted, to the greater glory of the Queen 
of Heaven, to take from this measure other similar 
measures, the which shall have the same indulgence." 

The German fac simile, however, lying before the 
writer, is much more narrow and delicate under the 
instep than the Italian, on which John's and Clement's 
endorsement grants seven hundred years' indulgence, 
rather than the three hundred as on the broader Ital- 
ian copy. The German is preferable by four hundred 
years out of purgatory for the same number of kisses 
and Aves. 

To all this evidence that the living, by their prayers 
and sufferings and masses, may benefit the dead and 
shorten their delay and pains in purgatory, this caveat 
is carefully filled in by the mother church. If one is 
careless about penance, neglects the confessional, and 
fails to obtain absolution before death, he cannot be at 
once aided in purgatory by any works of the living. 
If not in earnest for a holy life, careless of little sins, 
uncharitable to neighbors, negligent of the commu- 
nion, with no sorrow for the crimes of youth, and con- 
verted on the death-bed — u ah ! how much combusti- 
ble matter, how many imperfections, venial sins, and 
temporal punishments due to mortal and venial sins, 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 69 

do you think they took with them to be cancelled in 
the flames of purgatory ? . . . In the life and revela- 
tions of St. Gertrude we read that those who have 
committed many grievous sins, and who die without 
having done due penance, are not assisted by the ordi- 
nary suffrages of the church until they are partly puri- 
fied by divine justice in purgatory."* 

While this celestial treasure of the church, this 
spiritual bank of merit, has deposits almost infinite for 
the benefit of suffering souls, and while it can be 
checked out on call at the option of the priest, it is 
under special and stringent guards and limitations. 
Eminently proper and sacredly right it is that such a 
brokerage in the policies, stocks, insurances, and col- 
laterals of the world to come should be hedged about 
to the extreme limits of human caution and invention. 
If malfeasance, breaches of trust, perversion of funds, 
and financial ' l irregularities ! ' are irrepressible and 
almost inevitable in matters of dollars and cents, how 
much greater the temptations and liabilities at a spir- 
itual banking-house, where the receiving and paying 
tellers have the momentous handling for their custom- 
ers of sins and salvation and perdition ! 

There is a society, entitled The Arch-Confraternity 
for the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. According 
to the Brief of Pius IX., dated March 27, 1862, the 
members of this society may gain the indulgence of 
seven years and seven quarantines for each visit to a 
graveyard, praying there for the repose of the departed, 

* Muller, pp. 23, 24. 



70 PURGATORY. 

and a plenary indulgence, on the usual conditions, for 
four such visits made within a month. * 

Some years since a society was formed in Dublin 
to assist the sick and dying, and prepare them by the 
last sacraments for death, and then to pray for their 
souls after death. 

The mutual advantages of this organisation, under 
the patronage of St. John the Evangelist, are suggested 
by the ninth rule: " Every superior shall, on his death, 
be entitled to three masses, every rector to two, and 
ever subscriber to one, provided he shall have died a 
natural death, being a subscriber for six months, and 
been clear of all dues at the time of his death. Sub- 
scriptions received in the chapel on every Wednesday 
evening. ' ' f 

Enough has been indicated and set forth in the 
above quotations to show the faith and practice of the 
papal Church on the doctrine of Indulgences. It may 
be well to show their views and usages concerning 
future and intended sins, though these are often inclu- 
ded in a Plenary Indulgence. 

The theory and practice of Teteel will illustrate 
this point. He assumed to sell indulgences for un- 
known future sins, be they more or less, and for defi- 
nite and intended crimes. In one of his public 
addresses, before offering his indulgences, he said, 
"Come, and I will give you letters, all properly 

* Muller, pp. 154, 155. 

t Blakeney's Manual of Romish Controversy, p. 215. T. Nelson & 
Sons, Edinburgh. 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 71 

sealed, by which even the sins that you intend to 
commit may be pardoned. ' ' * One of his letters of in- 
dulgence runs thus: ... "I, in virtue of the apostolic 
power that has been confided to me, absolve thee from 
all ecclesiastical censures, judgments, and penalties 
which thou mayest have incurred; moreover, from all 
excesses, sins, and crimes that thou mayest have com- 
mitted, however great and enormous they may be. . . . 
I remit the penalties thou shouldest have endured in 
purgatory. ... In the hour of death, the gate by which 
sinners enter the place of torments and punishment 
shall be closed against thee, and, on the contrary, the 
gate leading to the paradise of joy shall be open. And 
if thou shouldst not die for long years, this grace shall 
remain unalterable until thy last hour shall arrive, "f 

And this indulgence, covering all future sins, was 
tested and sustained, on a particular case, in the court 
at Hagenau in 1517. A lady who had purchased a 
full indulgence till death, died soon after. The hus- 
band, procuring no mass for the repose of her soul, 
was brought by the priest before the magistrate for 
contempt of religion. The following conversation 
ensued: 

11 ' Is your wife dead ?' { Yes. ' * What have you 
done for her?' ( I have buried her body and com- 
mended her soul to God. ' ' But have you had a mass 
said for the repose of her soul ?' i I have not ; it was 
of no use; she entered heaven at the moment of her 
death.' 'How do you know that?' 'Here is the 

* D'Aubigne's Reformation, Book 3, chap. 1. t Ibid. 



72 PURGATORY. 

proof,' and gave the indulgence to the magistrate. 
In it he read that at the moment of death the woman 
who had received it would at once enter heaven with- 
out going to purgatory. The husband then said, 4 If 
the reverend gentleman maintains that a mass is still 
necessary, my wife has been deceived by our most holy 
father the Pope; if she has not been, it is the priest 
who deceives me. ' There could be no reply, and the 
husband was acquitted. ' ' * 

A Saxon nobleman gave a more practical and per- 
sonal test of Tetsel's theory of indulgence for intended 
sins. He asked Teteel if he could pardon a slight 
revenge that he wished to take on an enemy. The 
monk assented, and the price was fixed at thirty 
crowns, and paid. When Teteel left Leipsic and was 
in a wood between Jiiterbock and Treblin, the noble- 
man waylaid and robbed him of his indulgence money. 
It was for this very act that he bought the indulgence. 
Tetael carried the case into the courts, but the noble- 
man was acquitted, f Nor is there any evidence that 
Tet^el went beyond the instructions of L,eo in thus 
granting pardon for future as well as for past sins. It 
was the common theory of the church. 

It will be understood, from what has been said, that 
these indulgences could be obtained only by purchase, 
or in some manner rendering an equivalent. So 
alone could the Church of Rome realize the utility and 
ultimate design of the system. It was a system for 
relieving at times, and for replenishing at any time, 

* D'Aubigne's Reformation, Book 3, chap. 2. t Ibid. 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 73 

the papal treasury. Those visits to churches, altars, 
and sacred places, and those masses and prayers for 
the dead, do not become of value and force except as 
some official of the church takes part in them. For 
this he has his fee or unavoidable gratuity. Indulgen- 
ces and pardons have their prices graded to the sins 
rank, and pecuniary ability of him asking for them. 
Thus in their sale by Tetzel, "kings, queens, princes, 
archbishops, bishops, were, according to the scale, to 
pay twenty-five ducats for an ordinary indulgence. 
Abbots, counts, and barons, ten. The other nobles, 
the rectors, and all those who possessed an income of 
five hundred florins, paid six. Those who had two 
hundred florins a year, paid one, and others only a 
half. ' ' So run the papal instructions to this broker of 
pardons. ' ' For particular sins, Tetzel had a particular 
tax. For polygamy it was six ducats; for sacrilege 
and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats; for 
witchcraft, two ducats. Samson, who exercised the 
same trade in Switzerland as Tetzel in Germany, had 
a somewhat different scale. For infanticide he re- 
quired four livres tournois, and for parricide and fratri- 
cide, one ducat."* 

But much earlier than the days of Tetzel a volume 
of sins, with prices carried out, was prepared and pub- 
lished by the papal Church. The book is entitled, 
Taxa Cancellarias Apostolicae. ' > This arrangement 
of sins by catalogue, and marking their respective cost 
by a tariff of prices, is thus characterized by Claude 

* D'AubignS's Reformation, Book 3, chap. 1. 



74 PURGATORY. 

d'Espence, a candid Papist, and rector of the Sor- 
bonne: U A book wherein thou may est learn more 
wickedness than was ever yet discovered in all the 
summists and summaries of vices that are extant in 
all the world. A shameful book, a very index point- 
ing men the way to the most foul and hateful sins. ' f 

After 1569 the Romish Church denied the genu- 
ineness of this work, though during the one hundred 
years preceding twenty-seven editions of it had been 
published, the first fifteen at Rome. * 

A few items will show the quality of the work 
and the cost of crime about the times of the Reforma- 
tion. Murder by a bishop or abbot cost one hundred 
grossos, a grosso being from two to four pence. If a 
layman kill a layman, the absolution cost six grossos; 
and the same if a woman destroy her unborn child. 
For killing father, mother, brother, or wife, one ducat 
and five carlins; for a priest to keep a concubine, 
seven grossos, for a layman, eight; fornication for a 
man, six grossos, for a nun, nine ducats and thirty 
grossos; for defiling mother, sister, kinswoman, or 
godmother, five grossos; and for perjury, six grossos. f 

Like any article of commerce, indulgences have 
been put on the market of the world. In the year 
1709 an English privateer from Bristol captured a 
Spanish vessel on her way to America, and there were 
found on board upwards of three millions of indulgen- 

* The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome. By the Rev. Joseph 
Mendham, M. A. London: James Duncan. 1830. Pp. 75> 7& 
t Stopford's Pagano-Papismus, pp. 360, 361. 



THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 75 

ces, outward bound for a market. They varied in 
price from twenty pence for the poor, to eleven pounds 
for the rich. In 1800 another Spanish ship was cap- 
tured by Admiral Harvey off the coast of South Amer- 
ica, having among her invoiced merchandise bales of 
this ecclesiastical paper, bearing the seals of the courts 
of Spain and of Rome, valued at ^7,500. Here were 
indulgences for various sins, and for eating flesh on 
fast days, with prices from fifty cents each to seven 
dollars. Some Dutch merchants at Tortola bought 
the lot for ,^200, hoping to put them on the Spaniards 
in South America at vast profits. 

The proclamation of Jubilee Years, as they have 
been termed, has made this system of indulgences 
very specially profitable to the chair of St. Peter, 
Boniface VIII. proclaimed the first by a bull of Feb- 
ruary 22, 1300. By this bull he granted a full absolu- 
tion of all sins to such as should visit St. Peter's and 
St. Paul's at Rome between Christmas 1300 and 1301. 
And this Jubilee he ordained to be repeated at the 
close of each succeeding century. Pilgrims, to gain 
this indulgence, must visit these two churches daily 
for fifteen days in succession. The number that 
flocked to Rome on this call is perfectly incredible. 
The entire city through the whole year was as one 
crowd, the average being two hundred thousand stran- 
gers constantly. The offerings at the tombs of the two 
apostles were immense. Those in brass, and so of the 
poor alone, amounted to fifty thousand florins of gold. 
The gold florin being about seven shillings sterling, 

Purgatory. o 



y6 PURGATORY. 

and the value of money being then six times greater 
than now, this income from the poor alone must have 
been equal to about half a million of dollars. Then 
the offerings made by the wealthy, and in silver and 
gold, must have been immense indeed. * 

Clement VI. and the Romans, seeing the advan- 
tage that accrued from the first Jubilee, were anxious 
to shorten the time for the second. It was therefore 
proclaimed for 1350. The crowd of strangers anxious 
for a full absolution varied through the year from 
eight to twelve hundred thousand. The receipts in 
offerings and for masses, prayers, and other priestly 
service, must have been vastly great. Again the 
time was shortened to thirty-three years, and multi- 
tudes gathered at Rome in 1390. To royal persons 
who did not attend the Pope granted the same absolu- 
tion as if they had attended, but charged for it what 
would have been the cost of their journey to Rome. 
Not only so, but after the Jubilee was past the Pope 
sent his indulgence brokers into all parts of his domin- 
ions, to sell pardons to all who had been necessarily 
prevented from going to Rome. The receipts for this 
were great, f 

The year 1400 being the time for the Centennial 
Jubilee, according to the original plan of Boniface 
VIII., the people flocked to Rome in multitudes to 
gain the promised indulgences. Some idea may be 
formed of their number and of the amount of treasure 

* Bowers' History of the Popes, Cox's ed., vol. 3, pp. 47, 48. 
t Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 143, 144. 



THE THE OR Y OE IND UL GENCES, 77 

they carried, from the fact that the king of France 
forbade his own subjects attending, giving as a reason, 
that should they go as freely as they wished, his king- 
dom would become depopulated, and the whole wealth 
of the nation would be transferred to Rome. His ene- 
mies might also then come on him and find him with- 
out men or money. * 

Such facts as these will indicate what wide sweeps 
for treasure the popes were able to make through this 
power of granting indulgences. It is not strange, 
therefore, that Leo X. , wishing to immortalize himself 
by building St. Peter's, scarcely then conceived, sent 
out Tetael and a host of others to raise the funds by 
selling indulgences. And the policy succeeded well. 
For of the sixty or eighty millions of dollars which 
that basilica has cost, the most of the funds came by 
this means. And so the sale of indulgences procured 
for the world two noble gifts, St. Peter's and the Ref- 
ormation. 

It is due, however, to say that the papal Church, 
in the general Councils of L,ateran, Lyons, Vienne, 
and Trent, tried to prevent these abusive sales of in- 
dulgences. The Council of- Trent has these words: 

" Whereas many remedies, applied heretofore by 
divers councils against the wicked abuses of questors 
of alms, have in later times become useless, yea, rather 
the depravity of such, to the great scandal and com- 
plaint of all the faithful, found daily so much the more 
to increase, as that there seems no longer to be any 

* Bowers' History of the Popes, Cox's ed., vol. 3, p. 150. 



78 PURGATORY. 

hope left of their amendment, " the Synod ordains 
that the sale of indulgences be canonically stopped. * 

These " abuses" of sales by Tetzel and others had 
recently shamed and shocked the Christian world into 
the Reformation, and hence the diplomatic veto of the 
traffic by this august council in July, 1562. Yet the 
sales went on, as we have noticed above, and they 
continue to this day, as witness the advertisements of 
them so common in the churches at Rome: Indulgen- 
tia plenaria et perpetua et quotidiana, pro vivis et 
defunctis. f 

And why not ? While there is this vast heavenly 
treasure of the church on deposit, without spiritual 
interest, and subject to call, and may be applied for 
the relief of those suffering terribly in the middle 
state, it would seem to be most Christian and humane 
to encourage its distribution among the needy. May 
a government have its crowded granaries, and the 
starving and dying in its streets and hospitals, and yet 
refuse to sell supplies for the relief of these suffering 
ones? 

It would be a wrong to the latest type of Romanism 
not to quote here so eminent authority as Cardinal 
Wiseman on Indulgences. It is gratifying to feel that 
his clear and comprehensive statements leave nothing 
w r anting to our full understanding of this dogma. If 
the wide sweeping practice of this doctrine runs into 
painful and reproachful liberties, as in the days of 
Luther, as well as before and since, we must consider 

* Sess. XXL, ch. 9. t Percy's Romanism as it exists at Rome, p. 17, 



THE THE OR Y OF IND VL GENCES. 79 

thoughtfully what his Eminence says to his London 
audiences in his lectures at St. Mary's, Moorsfields, 
already quoted in Chapter IV. ' c Religion is a lively 
practical profession ; it is to be ascertained and judged 
by its sanctioned practices and outward demonstration, 
rather than by the mere opinions of a few."* 

But, as to the matter of this chapter, the cardinal 
says, " What is an Indulgence? It is no more than a 
remission by the church in virtue of the Keys, or the 
judicial authority committed to her, of a portion or 
the entire of the temporal punishment due to sin. The 
infinite merits of Christ form the fund whence this 
remission is derived. 

1 ' But besides, the church holds that by the com- 
munion of saints, penitential works performed by the 
just, beyond what their own sins might exact, are 
available to other members of Christ's mystical body; 
that, for instance, the sufferings of the spotless Mother 
of God, afflictions such as probably no other being ever 
felt in the soul — the austerities and persecutions of the 
Baptist, the friend of the Bridegroom, who was sancti- 
fied in his Mother's womb, and chosen to be an angel 
before the face of the Christ — the tortures endured by 
numberless martyrs, whose lives had been pure from 
vice and sin — the prolonged rigors of holy anchorites, 
who, flying from the temptations and dangers of the 
world, passed many years in penance and contempla- 
tion, all these made consecrated and valid through 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, p. 360. ^ 



80 PURGATORY. 

their union with the merits of Christ's passion — were 
not thrown away, but found a store of meritorious 
blessings, applicable to the satisfaction of other 
sinners. ' ' * 

From this store of meritorious blessing, as a re- 
serve fund for general use, grants are made to needy 
ones, here or in purgatory. The first has the dispen- 
sing power, and he may make a substitution of suffer- 
ings, endured by others, and not needed for their 
perfect salvation, and so left on deposit, or as we say 
commercially, subject to draft, for the benefit of others 
now under condemnation to suffering. " Such a sub- 
stitution is what constitutes all that Catholics under- 
stand by the name of an Indulgence. n f 

( ( It appears that in the ancient church relaxation 
from the rigor of the penitential institutions was 
granted in consideration of the interposition of the 
martyrs of Christ, who seemed to take on themselves 
the punishment due to the penitents according to the 
canonical institutions. " " From all that I have said, 
you will easily conclude that our indulgence and that 
of the ancient church rest upon the following common 
grounds: First that satisfaction has to be made to 
God for sin remitted, under the authority and regula- 
tion of the church. Secondly, that the church has 
always considered herself possessed of the authority to 
mitigate, by diminution or commutation, the penance 
which she enjoins, and that she has always reckoned 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, p. 365. t Ibid., p. 365. 



THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 81 

such a mitigation valid before God, who sanctions and 
accepts it. Thirdly, that the sufferings of the saints, 
in union with and by virtue of Christ's merits, are 
considered available towards the granting this mitiga- 
tion. Fourthly, that such mitigations, when pru- 
dently and justly granted, are conducive towards the 
spiritual weal and profit of Christians."* 

It is due to the fulness of statement of the doctrine 
as theoretically held, whatever ' ' the sanctioned prac- 
tices and outward demonstration ' ' may be, to add 
these words of Cardinal Wiseman: "In Indulgences 
the church has no reference to the inward guilt, or to 
the weight of eternal punishment incurred by sin, but 
only to the temporal chastisement and its necessary 
expiation." "The church always makes and has 
made confession and communion, and consequently 
exemption from the guilt of sin, an indispensable con- 
dition for receiving an indulgence. So that forgive- 
ness of sin must precede the participation of any such 
favor."t 

An illustration given by this author, and in this 
connection, will place his meaning beyond doubt. 
"In the middle ages Europe saw its princes and 
emperors, its knights and nobles, abandon country and 
home, and devote themselves to the cruel task of war 
in a distant clime, to regain the sepulchre of Christ 
from the hands of infidels. And what reward did the 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, pp. us, 375. 
t Ibid., p. 376. 



82 PURGATORY. 

church propose ? Nothing more than an indulgence. ' ' * 
So the Council of Clermont decreed in 1095, " Who- 
ever shall go to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of 
God, out of pure devotion, and not for the purpose of 
obtaining honor or money, let the journey be counted 
in lieu of all penance.' ' "Iter illud pro omni pceni- 
tentia reputetur." 

* Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
Church, p. 377. 



THEORY AND USE OF THE MASS. 8- 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE THEORY OF THE MASS, AND ITS USE. 

To appreciate the historical and doctrinal facts 
that we are quoting and the line of argument de- 
veloped by them, it is necessary to understand clearly 
what is meant by the sacrifice of the mass. It is the 
re-crucifixion and offering of Jesus Christ. In the 
mass that vicarious sacrifice, with all its expiatory 
power, is repeated. 

Dr. England thus defines it: u Under the appear- 
ance of bread and wine the Redeemer of the world is 
offered up in an unbloody manner upon our altars 
as a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the 
living and the dead. It is not a different sac- 
rifice from that of the cross, for the victim in each 
is the same. ... In the mass Christ is the victim; 
he is produced by the consecration, which by the 
power of God, and the institution of the Redeemer, 
and the act of the priest, places the body and blood of 
Christ, under the appearance of bread and wine, upon 
the altar. Then the priest makes an oblation of 
this victim to the Eternal Father, on behalf of the 
people, and the victim undergoes a destructive 
change. n * 

* Dr. England's Garden of the Soul. Of the Mass, pp. 4, 5. 



84 PURGATORY. 

The Council of Trent is explicit to the same point, 
that the true and proper Christ is offered vicariously 
in the mass. 

11 In this divine sacrifice which is performed in the 
mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in 
a bloodless manner who once offered himself in a 
bloody manner on the altar of the cross. . . . This 
sacrifice is truly propitiatory, and by means thereof 
this is effected, that we obtain mercy. . . . For the 
victim is one and the same, the same now offering by 
the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the 
cross, the manner alone of offering being different. . . . 
Wherefore, not only for the sins, punishments, satis- 
factions, and other necessities of the faithful who 
are alive, but also for those who are departed in 
Christ, and who are not as yet fully purified, is 
it rightly offered agreeably to a tradition of the 
apostles."* 

Therefore at the celebration of The Mass for the 
Dead, after the consecration, the priest says, " We offer 
before the throne of thy most excellent majesty in 
behalf of these departed souls, whom thy justice still 
detains in the pains of temporal punishment, this most 
holy, pure and unspotted victim." f 

And if the doctrine of purgatory and of the mass 
be true, then this must be most true that Miiller 
says in another place: "The most efficacious of all 

* The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. By Theodore 
Alois Buckley, B. A. Session XXII, Chap. II. 
t Miiller, p. 343. 



THEORY AND USE OF THE MASS. 85 

means to release these poor souls from their painful 
captivity is, undoubtedly, the holy sacrifice of the 
mass. ' ' * 

11 Indeed, so great is the efficacy of this sacrifice to 
obtain relief for the souls in purgatory, that the appli- 
cation of all the good works which have been performed 
from the beginning of the world would not afford so 
much assistance to one of these souls as is imparted by 
a single mass. n f 

It is a most fortunate thing for the theory of the 
mass and of its power to deliver from purgatory, that 
some of those delivered have come back to earth and 
given in their testimony. In the time of St. Bernard, 
a monk of Clairvaux did this. When questioned as to 
the special means of deliverance, he led the inquirer 
to the church, where a priest was celebrating mass, 
and said, ( i This is the means by which my deliver- 
ance has been effected; this is the power of God's 
mercy; this is the salutary sacrifice which takes away 
the sins of the world. ' ' J 

A conspicuous instance of the power of the mass to 
relieve a suffering soul is found in the case of the 
Greek Bmporor Theophilus. The Empress Theodora 
procured masses for her husband in all the convents 
of Constantinople, and so enlisted the sympathies of 
the patriarch Methodius that he ordered prayers for 
the Emperor by all the clergy and laity of the city. 

* Miiller, p. 51. 
t Ibid., p. 54, 55. 
t Ibid., p. 54. 



86 PURGATORY. 

While they were thus engaged in the church of St. 
Sophia, an angel appeared to Methodius, saying, 
c c Thy prayers, O bishop, have been heard, and The- 
ophilus has obtained pardon. ' ' And our Lord himself 
informed the Empress that her husband had been 
delivered from purgatory. 



OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 87 



CHAPTER X. 

OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 

The means placed in human hands for the relief 
of those suffering in purgatory are almost innumerable. 
They are as varied as human sympathies could call 
for, or human fancies invent. No mother could have 
a greater variety of pitying emotions, or show greater 
aptness and versatility in devising compassionate plans 
and tender methods for the comfort of a suffering child, 
than this holy mother church for the relief of her un- 
fortunate and suffering children. 

While the sacrifice of the mass has a preeminence 
beyond all comparison, according to the proper Chris- 
tian conception of the infinite and vicarious value of 
the crucifixion, and may for a trifle be repeated and 
applied totally for the benefit of one in particular, or 
many miscellaneously, in purgatory, still other and 
varied and multiplied means for their relief are in 
daily use, and should be noticed. 

The best authority on this branch of our subject is 
Miiller's Charity for the Souls in Purgatory ; for it 
is confined to this topic, and is a handbook for pri- 
vate devotions, of very recent date — Boston, 1872 — 
and specially for a section or meridian where ad- 
vanced science and religion combine to throw their 

Purgatory. q 



88 PURGATORY. 

clearest light. It is no mediaeval work, reedited for a 
fossil Italy or Spain or Mexico. 

" Lamenting, sobbing, and sighing, shedding tor- 
rents of tears and crying aloud, these poor souls stretch 
out their hands for one to help, console, and relieve 
them. We are the only ones who have it in our power 
to assist them in their suflferings. ' ' Then the author 
proceeds to illustrate, by citing the case of the Empe- 
ror Henry, who was about to put a whole city, young 
and aged, to massacre, because of long obstinacy in 
not surrendering. The little children were sent out in 
long procession, and with bitter wailing and supplica- ' 
tion that the city be spared ; and it was. He contin- 
ues : l c Would to God I could open the dungeons of 
purgatory and let you see the immense procession of 
poor suffering souls coming forth and crying in most 
lamentable and heart-rending voices, one after the 
other, i Father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, 
friend, have pity on me !' n * 

Then he makes these suffering ones plead thus for 
aid: " Tell Christians to give us their feet, by going to 
hear mass for us; to give us their eyes, by seeking an 
occasion to perform a good work for us; to give us 
their hands, by giving an alms for us, or by offering 
often the honoraries of one or more dollars for the c in- 
tention ' of the masses of the priest in our behalf; to 
give us their lips, by praying for us; to give us their 
tongue, by requesting others to be charitable to us; to 
give us their memory, by remembering us constantly 

* Muller, pp. 44, 46. 



OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 89 

in their devotions; to give us their body, by offering 
up for us to the Almighty all its labors, fatigues, and 
penances. ' ' * 

In this extract the theory of the Roman Church 
stands out distinctly. She holds that there are many 
pious acts which we can do for others that neverthe- 
less we are not obligated to do, and the neglect of 
them would not be sin. If we do them, we acquire a 
moral credit or merit for them. They have a spiritual 
value or worth with God, and we may apply that 
value or worth to whom we will, just as we make any 
other donation. If we apply it to a soul in purgatory, 
it goes so far to pay his debts to divine justice and 
hasten his release; as when we contribute to pay off 
the claims on some poor debtor, and so release him 
from legal suits and imprisonments. Any fatigue, 
pain, sorrow, fasting, self-denial, or sacrifice of any 
kind, thus voluntarily and unnecessarily borne for the 
benefit of a soul in purgatory, is, according to its pious 
valuation, a relief to that soul, bringing it so much 
nearer to its exit from purgatory. 

A peculiar method of relief is suggested by an inci- 
dent related by Father Clement Hoff bauer of Vienna, 
who died in 1820. He had administered the last rites 
to a dying nobleman. Soon after, the deceased ap- 
peared in a haggard, ragged, and pitiable condition to 
his wife, begging for relief. Father Hoffbauer, her 
confessor, advised her to clothe and comfort some poor 
beggar, which she did. In brief time her husband 
* Miiller, p. 49. 



9 o PURGATORY. 

reappeared in white garments and with much joy, 
thanking her for comforting him. * 

If one is heir to the property of a deceased person, 
the duty is binding and urgent to use some of it at 
once for the relief of the departed. i l But if the de- 
ceased in their last will have left legacies for holy 
masses or other pious works to be offered up for the 
repose of their souls, then it is not only a duty of char- 
ity, but an obligation of the strictest justice for their 
heirs and executors to execute their will most punctu- 
ally and without delay. n f 

All discomforts, pains, sufferings, and tortures, vol- 
untarily assumed and properly borne, we have said, 
are works of merit, by which one gains credit or dues 
from God. These claims may be relinquished or 
turned in favor of souls in purgatory. In this way 
self-imposed trials, as fasting, bodily inflictions, and 
pilgrimages, may be borne to relieve some friend in the 
sorrows of the middle state. The following is a case 
in point. Miiller says it took place in Dole, in France. 

"One day, in the year 1629, long after her death, 
Leonarda Colin, niece to Hugueta Roy, appeared to 
her, and spoke as follows: ' I am saved by the mercy 
of God. It is now seventeen years since I was struck 
down by a sudden death. My poor soul was in mortal 
sin, but, thanks to Mary, whose devoted servant I had 
ever striven to be, I obtained grace in the last extrem- 
ity to make an act of perfect contrition, and thus I am 
rescued from hell fire, but by no means from purga- 

* Miiller, pp. 73, 74. t Ibid., pp. 89, 90. 



OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 91 

tory. My sufferings in those purifying flames are be- 
yond description. At last Almighty God has permit- 
ted my guardian angel to conduct me to you, in order 
that you may make three pilgrimages to three churches 
of our Blessed Lady in Burgundy. Upon the fulfil- 
ment of said condition my deliverance from purgatory 
is promised. ' n Of course the pilgrimages were per- 
formed, and Leonarda was rescued. * 

There is yet another method of relief that must not 
fail of notice; where one formally makes over all his 
meritorious works for the benefit of souls in purgatory. 
A paper is drawn for signature, with blanks to be 
filled, as a kind of spiritual quit-claim. A part of it 
runs thus: 

1 ' I sincerely promise, and I here offer to thee my 
own free vow, to wish the liberation from purgatory 
of all those souls whose deliverance the Blessed Virgin 
may wish; and to that effect I place in the hands of 
this most pious Mother all my satisfactory works, and 
those of others applied to me, in life or death, and 

after my passage to eternity And if, perhaps, 

my works of satisfaction be not sufficient to pay the 
debts both of those souls which the Blessed Virgin 
wishes to liberate, and also my own for my sins, which 
I heartily detest and abhor, I offer myself, O Lord, if 
it please thee, to make up by my sufferings in purga- 
tory what is wanting for their release, committing 
myself into the arms of thy mercy and those of my 
most sweet Mother. " f 

* Mttller, pp. 133, 134. t Ibid., pp. 171, 172. 

9* 



92 PURGATORY. 

When St. Gertrude had done this and impoverished 
herself, the Lord appeared to her, and said, 

" My daughter, your charity towards the souls in 
purgatory has pleased me so much that, in reward for 
it, I have forgiven all the temporal punishment due to 
your sins. Moreover, I, who have promised a hun- 
dred-fold for every good action, intend to reward you 
more liberally than you can conceive, by increasing 
your glory and happiness in heaven. Finally, I will 
order all those souls whom you have delivered from 
purgatory to come and be present at your death, and 
to accompany your soul, with hymns of praise and 
thanksgiving, to paradise. " * 

With this papal theory of suffering in purgatory, 
and with all these varied means of relief coupled with 
this theory, there is an eloquence and a force in ap- 
peals to the living like this of Miiller: 

" There is a lavish expense for the funeral. A 
hundred dollars are spent, where the means of the 
family hardly justify the half of it. Where there is 
more wealth, sometimes five hundred or a thousand 
dollars, and even more, are expended upon the poor 
dead body. But let me ask you, what is done for the 
poor living soul ? Perhaps the poor soul is suffering 
the most frightful tortures in purgatory, while the 
lifeless body is laid out in state, and borne pompously 

to the graveyard What joy has the departed 

and perhaps suffering soul in the fine music of the 
choir, even should the choir be composed of the best 

* Miiller, pp. 175-177. 



OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 93 

opera singers in the country ? What consolation does 
the poor suffering soul feel in the superb coffin, in the 
splendid funeral ? Poor, unhappy souls ! Those that 
loved you in life might help you, and do not for want 
of knowledge or of faith."* 

But many, through human frailty, will neglect to 
provide in due season for themselves, as about to enter 
the other world, and the frailty of human friendships 
will perhaps leave them to neglect when they are 
gone. There is much worldly wisdom, therefore, in 
providing against these failures and losses by a spirit- 
ual corporation or moral and religious insurance com- 
pany. This the Romanists have wisely and kindly 
done by establishing what they call The Arch-Confra- 
ternity, for the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. It 
was founded in 1840 at Rome by the Redemptorist 
Fathers, in the church of S. Maria Monterone. Greg- 
ory XVI. approbated it, and he and Pius IX. have 
endowed it with the treasures of the church to the ex- 
tent of thirty-five plenary and over two hundred par- 
tial indulgences. Among the twenty-three advantages 
of membership, fully set forth, the twenty-first may be 
quoted as illustrative: 

4 ' Count, if you can, how many thousands of masses 
are offered up for the deceased members of the Arch- 
Confraternity. How many millions of prayers, of good 
works, of indulgences, especially those attached to the 
privileged altars and to the heroic act of charity above 
mentioned, which is certainly made by hundreds of 

* Muller, pp. 16-18. 



94 PURGATORY. 

members of the Confraternity. Oh, what great conso- 
lation and comfort for you in the hour of death, and 
far more in purgatory, to have been a member of this 
Arch-Confraternity ! How soon must the souls of its 
deceased members be delivered from their place of tor- 
ment ! Ah, when millions of tongues cry every day 
to our Ivord, c Have mercy, O I^ord, have mercy on 
the souls of our departed brethren P his justice will be 
put to the blush, as it were, and give way to his mer- 
cy, either by releasing them at once from their prison 
of fire, or by shortening the duration and diminishing 
the intensity of their sufferings. ' ' * 

* Muller's Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 182, 



CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE. 95 



CHAPTER XI. 

CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE FROM PURGA- 
TORY. 

Of course it must be very gratifying to friends to 
know that their efforts to deliver souls from that abode 
of suffering have been successful. Moreover, this 
knowledge of success is indispensable to confirm the 
popular mind in the belief of the doctrine, and to in- 
crease the canonical ways and means to deliver those 
imprisoned debtors to justice. If cases of confessed 
deliverance could not be cited, there would be a great 
defect and deficiency in this wonderful scheme of Ro- 
manism, that makes so much of the middle state of 
souls. There would be one little area left on the sur- 
face of human nature that Romanism, in its marvel- 
lous swaying of the soul, had failed to touch. Hence 
there are cases of escape, secured by specific means, 
that have come to the knowledge of the benefactors 
by revelation or vision or apparition. 

For a long time Sister Catherine of Paluwi offered 
prayers and other means for the release of the soul of 
her father, and supposed she had been successful. But 
one day, led in spirit to purgatory, she made the sor- 
rowful discovery of her mistake. Then she cast her- 
self at the feet of her Divine Master, saying, " Charge 
me, O Lord, with my father's indebtedness to thy jus- 



96 * PURGATORY. 

tice. In expiation of it I am ready to take upon my- 
self all the afflictions thou art pleased to impose on 
me." This act of heroic charity was accepted, and 
the daughter had the unspeakable joy of assurance 
that her father was released. Yet her own substituted 
and solicited sufferings were fearful. * 

After St. Vincent Ferrer had said the thirtieth 
mass for the repose of the *soul of his sister Frances, 
it was revealed to him that, but for his efforts, she 
would have suffered in purgatory to the end of the 
world, f 

St. Malachy, the Irish bishop, had a more trying, 
extended struggle for the release of his sister, though 
with a success well known at last. She had led a 
worldly life, but he followed her death with prayers 
and masses till he supposed she had joined the blessed. 
Then he seemed to see her standing outside the grave- 
yard, pale and sad, and famished with hunger, as she 
told him. He understood her to refer to the mass, 
food for the soul, and so continued that sacrifice for a 
time. Then he saw her again, near the church door, 
but unable to enter. He continued his offerings, and 
again saw her within, but at a distance from the altar. 
At length, while he stood by the altar, after many 
and long prayers and offerings for her, she drew near, 
accompanied by a multitude of blessed spirits; and 
thanking him for his so tender and persevering labors 
in her behalf, she departed for glory. % 

So St. Gregory the Great said mass for thirty days 

* Muller, p. 18. t Ibid., p. 24. % Ibid., pp. 52-54. 



CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE. 97 

for a deceased monk, who appeared to Gregory on 
the thirtieth day, and told him that he was all right 
now. * 

The only son of a pious widow in Bologna was 
murdered, and the murderer came into the hands of 
the poor mother. Instead of bringing him to punish- 
ment, she thought it would be more Christlike to for- 
give him, and so pardoned him, and adopted him into 
the place of the murdered son. This so pleased God 
that he at once released her son from purgatory. 
"The happy son then appeared to his mother in a 
glorified state, at the very moment when he was en- 
tering heaven. ' ' f 

Miiller quotes another striking case in these words: 
"When the priest came to the moment of consecra- 
tion, he took the sacred host in his hands, and said, 
4 O holy and eternal Father, let us make an exchange. 
Thou hast the soul of my friend, who is in purgatory, 
and I have the body of thy Son, who is in my hands. 
Well, do thou deliver my friend, and I offer thee thy 
Son, with all the merits of his death and passion.' 
In fact, at the moment of the elevation, he saw the 
soul of his friend rising to heaven, all radiant with 
glory. "J 

A woman of public scandal, banished from an 
Italian town, died in neglect, and was denied a Chris- 
tian burial. No one presumed to pray for her, assu- 
ming that she was lost. After four years she appeared 
to Sister Catherine of St. Augustine, begging a few 

. * Miiller, p. 56. t Ibid., 78-80. J Ibid., p. 57. 



98 PURGATORY. 

prayers and masses that she might be passed along 
towards heaven. The reqnest was granted, and in a 
few days she appeared again, saying, "I thank yon, 
sister, for yonr kind service. I am now on my way to 
heaven, there to praise the mercies of God and Mary, 
there to pray for you."* 

* Miiller, pp. 130-133. 



AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATOR V. 99 



CHAPTER XII. 

AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATORY. 

The incident of the Parisian servant-girl, else- 
where narrated, opens up to us a separate line of 
facts and thoughts on our general subject. She, 
being out of a place for service, was led to a per- 
manent home, and into all the comforts and priv- 
ileges of adoption, by the young man whose soul 
she, by prayers and masses, had delivered from pur- 
gatory. 

It seems that such aid from those redeemed is no 
unusual thing, and in their gratitude they are fre- 
quently returning favors on their benefactors. 

"It is true," says Miiller, quoting from St. Al- 
phonsus, i ' they are unable to pray or merit anything 
for themselves, yet when they pray for others they are 
heard by God. The reason is simply this: these souls 
are friends of God ; they are spouses of Jesus Christ, 
to whom gratitude is as agreeable as ingratitude is 
hateful. How, then, could God turn a deaf ear to the 
prayers of gratitude sent up by the suffering souls? 
God hears such intercessions willingly. Nay, he not 
unfrequently allows the poor souls to assist their bene- 
factors in a most striking manner, not merely in tri- 
fling matters, but in great necessities of body and 

soul." 

10 

Purgatory. 



ioo PURGATORY. 

Then follow many illustrative cases, taken from 
St. Gregory the Great and others. " Whenever St. 
Catharine of Bologna wished to obtain a certain favor, 
she had recourse to the souls in purgatory, and her 
prayers were immediately heard." Indeed, she was 
often successful with them when prayers directed to 
the saints in glory failed of answers. 

In 1649 a bookseller of Cologne, one Freyssen, had 
a very sick child, of whom the doctors despaired. 
The anxious father went to a church altar and vowed 
to distribute, gratuitously, one hundred copies of a 
little work on souls in purgatory, written by Father 
Montfort, trusting that souls there would thus be 
moved to pray for his child. Nor was he disap- 
pointed; for, returning home, he " found his child 
considerably better, and the day after it was perfectly 
cured." Three weeks later, his wife being danger- 
ously ill, he promised at the altar to double the distri- 
bution of the books if she should recover. ( ( On his 
way home he met one of his servants, who brought 
him the good news that his wife was out of danger." 
The father and husband must have had the double 
comfort of both restored health in his family and an 
increase in his book business. For two hundred 
books, given away in those circumstances, with rea- 
sons assigned and results stated, must have been a 
splendid advertisement of his goods as well as of his 
doctrines. 

A certain pious knight was accustomed to pray for 
the poor souls in purgatory whenever he passed 



AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATORY. 101 

through a graveyard. On one occasion he was beset 
suddenly and dangerously by certain enemies, so that 
he feared for his life and fled. Coming to a grave- 
yard, he stopped and knelt and prayed as usual for 
those suffering souls. When his enemies came up 
they saw him surrounded by a host of armed men. 
Then it was their turn to be frightened and flee, 
which they did, and the knight escaped. To which 
recital Miiller adds : 4 c We may most piously be- 
lieve that these armed men were the souls of those 
faithful departed for whom the good knight had 
prayed, and whom our Lord had permitted to as- 
sume those forms to protect their benefactor in his 
danger. ' ' 

The same author gives a case even more interest- 
ing, illustrative of the fact that the souls in purgatory 
do remember gratefully and helpfully those who have 
prayed for them. The increased interest lies in the 
fact that the one aided is no less a personage than his 
late Holiness Pius IX. The facts, as stated by Miil- 
ler, are these: 

The Pope appointed to the Italian Episcopate an 
humble and retiring monk in Tuscany. He was 
greatly unwilling to take the office, and among other 
objections said he had a most miserable memory. To 
this Pius IX. replied, " At one time of my life I also 
was threatened with the loss of my memory. But I 
found a remedy, used it, and it has not failed me. 
For the special intention of preserving this faculty of 
memory, I have said every day a De Profundis for the 



io2 PURGATORY. 

souls in purgatory. ' ' We share with Miiller the sur- 
prise that he thus expresses in view of this statement 
of His Holiness: "It is a new revelation that our 
Holy Father, Pius IX. , was ever threatened with the 
loss of memory. Of all his faculties of mind, there is 
not one that excites such general astonishment as his 
wonderful memory. It seems as if he never forgets 
anything he once hears. Now the souls in purgatory 
obtained this blessing for the Holy Father in reward 
for the prayers he was accustomed to offer up to God 
for their deliverance. ' ' * 

We confess to an astonishment beyond what Miil- 
ler here shows over the wonderful aid from the under 
world to the mental powers of His Holiness. Of 
course, the methods by which disembodied and in- 
carcerated spirits could approach and develop and 
strengthen his faculty of memory must be mysterious. 
The laws of psychology and mental processes are not 
well enough understood to make the statement a sub- 
ject of rational investigation and metaphysical analy- 
sis. The offered fact must be taken on faith, just as 
we receive so much concerning the incomprehensible, 
unknown, and infinite. If the statement is received 
with some tinge of incredulity, that must be par- 
doned to the weakness of an inquisitive Protestant 
mind. 

It is interesting to note that this idea of aid to 
mortals from the departed is nothing new to Roman- 
ism. In the Hindoo Rig Veda, a collection of a thou- 

* Miiller, pp. 101-116. 



AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATORY. 103 

sand hymns, ante-dating Christianity by eight cen- 
turies, we find this passage : ' ' On the path of the 
fathers there are eight and eighty thousand patri- 
archal men, who turn back to the earthly life to sow 
righteousness and to succor it. n * 

* Oriental Religions. By Samuel Johnson. India. P. 132. 



10* 



104 PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DOCTRINE INTO THE 

CHURCH. 

Kix, additions to the Christian systems, and all 
improvements, so called, of Christian theology, have 
been from small beginnings, and, bnt for consequences, 
we should call them insignificant. With his charac- 
teristic unfairness towards a revealed religion, the infi- 
del Hume throws a sneer at the iota controversy, over- 
looking the fact that the question of deity or no deity 
there turned on an iota. In the investigation before 
us it will be found that the defection from the line of 
true faith is so nearly imperceptible, and to the easy 
mind so unappreciable, as to have the relations of the 
asymptote to the curve. 

We have gone so far in this historical disquisition 
as to find a middle place for souls departed that is local 
and architectural — architectural, if that term may be 
applied to hall and cave, hill, cliff and valley, courts, 
avenues, lakes, lawns, and corridors. Here we have 
found the souls of the deceased, with bodies suited to 
a place whose material and atmosphere, and heat and 
cold, and total constitution and laws, are peculiarly its 
own. These souls are burdened with unfinished pro- 
bations, whose completion they are incessantly hasten- 
ing with agonies and anxieties and expectations. To 



ITS INTRODUCTION. 105 

• 

this end no form of toil or endurance is wanting that 
can be expiatory and punitive and purifying. All 
forms of guilt and every grade of each are here, wear- 
ing off painfully and with the months or ages its de- 
merit. In this vast and awful crucible of the moral 
universe souls are constantly coming and going in 
crowded and disorderly procession. It is as if some 
hundred-gated Thebes, with radiating railways at each 
portal, should be constantly filling and emptying itself 
with the populace of an empire. 

To stay the ingress of this multitude the church, 
Roman and oecumenical, is bending her ritual and 
ceremonial energies; and to hasten the egress of the 
multitude within, this church belts the whole habita- 
ble globe, day and night, with prayer and mass, vigil 
and fasting, penance and pain, self-sacrifice, toils, and 
tears. 

The firm belief of these millions in such a place, 
with such suffering inmates, and in the ability and 
duty of the living to help and hasten them out, is 
equalled only by the sincerity, ardor, and painful de- 
votion with which they struggle to deliver them. For, 
whatever may be thought of the inner views on this 
subject of the more advanced minds in the papal com- 
munion, very firm and devout convictions on it must 
be conceded to the great multitude in that commu- 
nion. 

How such a doctrine could gain a place in the the- 
ology of the church, and how it could attain to such 
prominence and power in one section of the church, is 



io6 PURGATORY. 

another branch in our investigations, to which we now 
turn. 

The introduction into the church of this doctrine 
and practice was from small beginnings and by slow 
growth. This wonderful departure from the simplicity 
and truth of an apostolic Christianity finds its begin- 
ning in an anterior deflection from the true line. As 
early as A. D. 150 regeneration was confounded with 
baptism. A certain magical power was supposed to 
pertain to the baptismal rite, and forgiveness of all 
sins preceding the act was supposed to accompany it. 
A century later this was common doctrine. Indeed, it 
was then supposed that forgiveness through the merits 
of Christ could be obtained only for those sins commit- 
ted before baptism. Hence many, as Constantine, de- 
ferred the rite as long as they could presume on life. 
Then, as to sins committed after baptism, it was sup- 
posed that they were pardoned in consideration of pen- 
ance and good works. So Cyprian taught: "The 
forgiveness of sin having been once obtained at bap- 
tism, we earn, by constant exercise in well-doing, 
which is as it were a repetition of baptism, the divine 
forgiveness anew." 

The next step was easily gained — that if one satis- 
fies not for sins committed after baptism by alms, good 
works, and penance, he must do penance for them 
after death in an intermediate state ; for this Jewish, 
Magian, and Platonic notion of such a state had al- 
ready gained disciples among the Christian teachers. 
Muller, already frequently quoted as one of the latest 



ITS INTRODUCTION. 107 

Roman-catholic authorities, says in his Charity for the 
Souls in Purgatory, u The belief in this doctrine is 
much more ancient than Christianity itself. " * And 
Neander thinks it probable that Cyprian is the first to 
promulgate this idea in the church, and that he does 
it in these words of his fifty-second epistle : ' ' Missum 
in carcerem non exire inde, donee solvat novissimum 
quadrantem, pro peccatis longo dolore cruciatum emun- 
dari, et purgari diu igne."f This wants but little if 
anything of the theory of the " ignis purgatorius" of 
the Western Church so fully developed afterwards. 

Whether Cyprian stood sponsor at the baptism into 
the Christian Church of this notion of a purifying fire 
after death may admit of a question. It is, however, 
certain that this was the fruitful germ of that vast 
Romish aftergrowth, the purgatorial system, and that 
its incipient development in the church first appeared 
in the times of Cyprian, whose martyr-death occurred 
A. D. 258. If we pass along to the times of Pelagius 
and Augustine, early in the fifth century, we shall 
find that the doctrine under inquiry had assumed both 
a definite and a warmly - disputed position in the 
church. Its tendencies and fruits began so to show 
themselves that Pelagius opposed the doctrine as inju- 
rious to good morals. While he is full of sorrow for 
the moral degradation of the masses of nominal Chris- 
tians in his day, he makes special attack on this pur- 
gatorial system as aiding to this sad degeneracy. 

* MUller, p. 12. 

t Church History, 1:654. Torrey's Trans. 



108 PURGATORY. 

Many in the church led a vicious life, assuming that 
an orthodox faith and a formal use of the rites of the 
church made their final salvation sure, though they 
expected temporary punishments for their sins in the 
future state of purgation. In defence of this comfort- 
ing and corrupting expectation they pleaded the decla- 
ration of Paul that "the fire shall try every man's 
work," etc. 

But this passage, Pelagius contended, taught the 
punishments of hell, which were unending. And to 
combat the same error he maintained with much stren- 
uousness the eternity of future punishments. Hence, 
when he was summoned before the Synod of Diospolis 
in Palestine, in the year 415, he was accused of stating 
and holding this position: u In die judicii iniquis et 
peccatoribus non esse parcendum ; sed seternis eos ig- 
nibus esse exurendos. ' ' * 

Augustine, however, took an opposite view, though 
with much carefulness of statement. He thought it 
supposable that the purifying trials of God's children 
might be continued after death for a longer or shorter 
time, as need might be, and in a purgating fire. His 
language on the continuance of punishment hereafter 
is: "Tale aliquid etiam post hanc vitam fieri incredi- 
bile non est, et utrum ita sit, quaeri potest. Et aut 
inveniri aut latere, nonnullos fideles per ignem purga- 
torium, quanto magis minusve bona pereuntia dilexe- 
runt, quanto tardius citiusve salvari."t 

On the other hand, the Council of Carthage, A. D. 

* Neander, II. p. 584, note 1. t Hagenbach's His. Doc, I. p. 382. 



ITS INTRODUCTION. 109 

418, condemned the doctrine of an intermediate state, 
and on the ground that no third state can be conceived 
of between heaven and hell. 

It was reserved for Gregory the Great to make this 
doctrine of Purgatory a necessary article of faith. He 
set it forth distinctly as a dogma of the church that 
must be received by all the faithful. " De quibusdam 
levibus culpis esse ante judicium purgatorius ignis 
credendus est. n * 

He also first taught in the Christian Church that 
masses and prayers for the dead avail to deliver them 
from purgatory. And if he did not clearly develop 
the plan of pecuniary commutation for sins, he more 
than any other one prepared its bold outlines, and led 
the way to that unblushing sale of indulgences which 
culminated in L,eo X. and Teteel. 

But departures from a pure faith in times long an- 
terior to Gregory prepared him for this bold advance. 
In the days of Augustine and Chrysostom, Neander 
tells us that there was c l the delusive persuasion that 
any man, no matter what his life, could make sure of 
being delivered from divine punishment, and intro- 
duced into the community of the blessed, by the charm 
of outward baptism; which mistaken confidence in the 
magical cleansing and atoning efficacy of baptism en- 
couraged numbers to persevere to the last in the indul- 
gence of their lusts, hoping to avail themselves of this 
as a final remedy." And he adds that the same delu- 
sion prevailed " respecting the sanctifying effects of 

* Dialogues, IV. p. 39. See also Hagenbach, I. pp. 382. 



no PURGATORY. 

the communion, n "of pilgrimages to spots consecrated 
by religious remembrances, of donations to churches, 
of almsgiving, especially to ecclesiastics and monks. ! ' * 
The idea had also obtained that the sacrament of 
the Supper in its celebration was not simply commem- 
orative, but also sacrificial, and as such efficacious. 
The officiating priest was supposed to act, after some 
manner, the part of a mediator between God and man, 
and Christ was supposed to become so connected with 
the elements, after their consecration, as to impart an 
atoning efficiency to the sacrament. And at this ser- 
vice, observed with this notion of its efficacy, interces- 
sions were made for the living and the dead, and a 
peculiar power was supposed to attach to these pray- 
ers. Special pains were taken by friends to call up 
the names of the departed, on the anniversaries of 
their death, during this sacrament, that so its efficacy 
through special prayers might turn to the repose of 
their souls. So Cyrill of Jerusalem taught: " As when 
the emperor condemns one to banishment ; but if hh 
kinsmen present a chaplet in his behalf, the emperor 
is induced to show him favor ; so we present to God, 
in behalf of those who are asleep, though they were 
sinners, the Christ who was offered for our sins." And 
so even Augustine: "Oblationes pro spiritibus dor- 
mientium, quas vere aliquid adjuvare credendum 

est."f 

Moreover, the patrons of churches and donors to 
churches, with their gifts, were publicly announced 
* Neandei) XI. p. 224. t MA, IL pp. 33 1 * 332. 



ITS INTR OD UCTION. 1 1 1 

during this celebration, and public prayers offered for 
them. And all this, in connection with the sacrificial 
character of the Supper, was supposed to have a kind 
of magical effect for the spiritual good of these persons. 

In this form, substantially, lay the material for this 
huge system of purgatory when Gregory the Great 
came to be a leading mind in the church. A little 
reflection will show that all the elements necessary for 
the system had been developed. There was the inter- 
mediate state and the purifying fire in it, the sacrificial 
and vicarious efficacy of the mass, the virtue of pray- 
ers connected with it for the repose of the dead, and 
the atoning power of alms and oblations and works of 
penance. These materials came drifting along the 
stream of the centuries to the times of Gregory. But 
they were not organized; they were disjecta membra. 
He had penetration enough to see that, united and de- 
veloped, they would constitute a mighty instrumental- 
ity. He gathered and organized these elements into a 
system. Under his shaping hand arose, in its principal 
outlines, this vast purgatorial fabric. As none before 
him gave it definiteness of form, so none after him 
varied it in its essential features. 

We turn, then, to a sketch of the system as it lay in 
his mind and was matured in his times and under his 
influence. 



Purgatory. 1 1 



ii2 PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

GREGORY THE GREAT SHAPES THE THEORY OF 
PURGATORY. 

Gregory, it will be remembered, received the 
highest honors of the Church in the chair of St. Peter 
A. D. 590, and died A. D. 604. He was strongly in- 
clined to believe in a magical or supernatural efficacy 
in the sacraments and in the priestly offices of the 
church. In the celebration of the communion he saw 
the passion of our Lord virtually repeated. His words 
are: u Christus iterum in hoc mysterio sacrae oblatio- 
nis immolatur. ' > The act of the priest at this service 
was, by virtue of his office, of a sacrificial character. 
It was the atoning offering of Christ repeated. And 
so, as often as the mass was celebrated, some at least 
of the power of the first and real sacrifice of our Lord 
pertained to the act, and passed over to the benefit of 
those for whom the act was performed. Yet it should 
be added, as due to his full view, that he insisted on 
contrition and the entire devotion of ourselves to God 
when we thus receive this wonderful benefit from the 
mass. In his fourth dialogue he thus states his views 
on this point: " Necesse est, ut cum haec agimus, nos- 
metipsos Deo in cordis contritione mactemus, quia 
qui passionis dominicae mysteria celebramus, debemus 
imitari quod agimus. Tunc ergo vere pro nobis hos- 



POPE GREGORY S POLICY. 113 

tia erit Deo, cum nos ipsos hostiam fecerimus." And 
as this supernatural power in the sacrifice of the mass 
could be applied for the benefit of any for whom it 
was celebrated, he conceived that its efficacy could 
be realized by both the absent and the dead. The 
notion of a preceding age had located many of the 
departed in a purgatorial state, till sins yet adhering 
should be cast off and due penance suffered. For the 
more speedy release of such, he taught that this 
priestly iteration of the sacrifice of Christ in the mass 
could be made. This position he fortified by actual 
testimony from the spirit world in those legends and 
stories with which his fourth dialogue abounds. Illus- 
trations of these are there found in the stories of Pascha- 
sius, St. Severin, St. Malachy, St. Bernard, and others, 
as already quoted. In the same dialogue he states the 
position dogmatically in such forms as these : " Much 
profits souls even after death the sacred oblation of the 
life-giving Sacrifice, so that the souls of the dead them- 
selves sometimes seem to ask for it." " They who are 
not weighed down by grievous sins are profited after 
death by burial in the church, because that their rela- 
tives, whenever they come to the same sacred places, 
remember their own kin whose tombs they behold, 
and pray to the Lord for them." This legendary evi- 
dence had wonderful power in an age so superstitious. 
Its misty, intangible, mysterious character magni- 
fied it. 

The position thus taken, fortified, and credited, 
that the oblation of the mass thus availed for the dead, 



ii4 PURGATORY. 

the priests were of course besought earnestly, and with 
various and often very valuable presents, to say mass 
for the repose of the souls of dear friends departed. 
And as the efficacy pertained wholly to the priestly 
part of the service, the congregation gradually fell off 
from attendance. Hence sprung up the ' ' missae pri- 
vate," though under protest, when at the offering of 
the mass the priest alone was present. And thus came 
there into an accredited place in the church that broad 
portion of the purgatorial system that pertains to the 
efficacy of masses and prayers for the dead. 

It is next in order to note the introduction and es- 
tablishment of another important branch of the system, 
the Theory of Indulgences, whose practical workings 
we have already outlined. In this part of the process 
of constructing the system of purgatory and introdu- 
cing it into the church, the cooperation and master- 
hand of Gregory are not so obvious, though the germ 
of the indulgence theory appeared before his pontifi- 
cate, and its maturity soon after. 

Anterior to the introduction of Christianity among 
them, the barbarous Germanic tribes, as well as those 
of England, had the civil practice of compounding 
crimes for money. A pecuniary mulct exempted from 
punishment for murder or any smaller crime. The 
painfully compromising and heathenizing spirit and 
policy of Christian missions, by which pagan notions, 
rites, and habits, were introduced into the church, 
were manifested even as early as the fourth and fifth 
centuries. 



POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 115 

This civil custom of pecuniary redemption from 
punishment the early Christians among those nations 
incorporated into their regulations of church penance; 
and so, instead of the usual and prescribed satisfaction 
for sins, the delinquent was absolved for a fine. So 
Boniface, the missionary, says in a fragment of one of 
his sermons still extant, 4 c We address you, not as the 
messengers of one from the obligation of obedience to 
whom you can purchase exemption with money.' y 
11 Doubtless an allusion/' says Neander in a note on 
the passage, ' c to the compositiones customary among 
the German tribes. Out of accommodation to this cus- 
tom, against which Boniface seems here to be guard- 
ing himself, grew the indulgences. ' ' * 

How early this custom obtained is not evident. Of 
penitential certificates thus granted the Second Coun- 
cil of Chalons, A. D. 813, thus speaks: c< Quorum sunt 
certi errores, incerti auctores. ' ' Certain it is that the 
custom prevailed in the fifth century ; for Neander 
says, l ' Even a church father of the fifth century, per- 
haps Maximus of Turin, felt constrained to speak ear- 
nestly against the abuse of indulgences practised by 
the Arian ecclesiastics among the barbarian tribes, and 
which had sprung out of accommodation to these pre- 
vailing customs, f 

* Neander, III. p. 52. 

t " Propositi eorum, quos presbyteros vocant, dicuntur tale habere 
mandatum, ut si quis laicorum fassus fuerit crimen admissum, non dicat 
illi, age pcenitentiam ; defle peccata ; sed dicat, pro hoc crimine da tantum 
mihi, et indulgetur tibi. Vanus plane et insipiens presbyter, qui cum ille 
praedam accipiat, putat, quod peccatum Christus indulgeat. Nescit, quid 

II* 



n6 PURGATORY. 

Another species of commutation for ecclesiastical 
penance came into use in the Anglo-Saxon Church, 
showing a like tendency to the completion of the sys- 
tem of indulgences. 

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury in the sev- 
enth century, prepared a penitential system for the 
English Church. The principal punishment enjoined 
in it was fasting. And the time ranged, according to 
the sin, from ten days to one, five, seven years, and, 
in extreme cases, even to the remnant of life. But it 
was found too severe a system. Anglo-Saxon, not to 
say human nature, would not endure it. Then arose 
the species of commutation referred to. One advanced 
in life, or apparently nigh to death, yet owing a long 
canonical penance, was allowed to commute it in do- 
nations to the church, or he might ( ' build bridges over 
deep waters and over foul ways," "help poor men, 
widows, and step-children and foreigners, free his own 
slaves, and redeem to freedom the slaves of other men, 
feed the needy, and clothe, house and fire, bathe and 
bed them."* 

This idea developed into " a perfect system, which 
regulated with precision, according to the rank and 
wealth of the penitent, the price at which the fast of 
a day, a month, or a year, might be lawfully re- 
deemed." This was for the sick and infirm. But it 



salvator solet peccata donare et pro delicto quaerere pretiosas lacrimas, 
non pecunias numerosas."* 
* Thorpe, II. p. 282. 

* Neander, III. p. 137. 



POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 117 

did not work equally well for rich and poor. Egbert, 
therefore, Archbishop of York, modified the plan, and 
" intrusted it to the prudence of the confessor to en- 
join, when the penitent pleaded infirmity or inability, a 
real equivalent in prayers or money. Thus," says the 
Catholic Lingard, u a new system of canonical arith- 
metic was established; and the fast of a day was taxed 
at the rate of a silver penny for the rich, or of fifty 
pater-nosters for the illiterate, and fifty psalms for the 
learned. ' ' 

With this conformity to civil usage and the com- 
mutation of church penance to a fine, there at length 
grew up a confounding of priestly absolution with the 
divine forgiveness of sins. Closely on this came the 
fatal delusion, so pregnant with evils for a thousand 
years following, that immunity from punishment for 
sins here and in purgatory could be purchased of the 
priest. Not only so, but the sentiment prevailed that 
almsgiving, repetition of psalms and prayers, various 
sufferings and good works, when procured to be done 
through others, had an adequate merit for the absolu- 
tion of him procuring them. For this reason men 
deep in sin sought to be enrolled as members of mon- 
asteries celebrated for their piety, that they might share 
in the benefit of the good works done there. Individ- 
uals hired others to recite prayers and psalms for them. 
They went through suffering by proxy, engaging mer- 
cenary penitents to endure the austerities appointed to 
themselves. The rich thane or noble would put his 

* Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church, I. pp. 334-337. 



n8 PURGATORY. 

entire body of tenantry under penitential regimen, and 
appropriate the amount of merit so acquired to his own 
redemption. "At his summons, his friends and de- 
pendents assembled at his castle ; they also assumed 
the garb of penitence ; their food was confined to 
bread, herbs, and water ; and these austerities were 
continued till the aggregate amount of their fasts 
equalled the number specified by the canons. Thus, 
with the assistance of one hundred and twenty asso- 
ciates, an opulent sinner might, in the short space of 
three days, discharge the penance of a whole year. ' ' * 

And so the Council of Cloveshoe, assembled in 
747 for the reformation of the English Church, com- 
plained that recently a wealthy man, asking a speedy 
absolution for some great crime, affirmed that it had 
been expiated so fully by the aid of others in fasting, 
almsgiving, and chanting of psalms for him, that 
should he live three hundred years, he would not need 
to suffer any more penance. 

But though this council and others and individuals 
reprobated this system of vicarious penance, and in- 
sisted on personal sorrow for sin, and placed many 
checks and guards and limitations around a purchased 
absolution, and the efficacy of the mass and the pray- 
ers of the living for the dead, the great body of the 
church felt otherwise. This was too easy a way for 
the sinner, and too lucrative and powerful a way for 
the priest, to be abandoned. 

The system allowed too free a play to the propen- 

* Lingard, I. p. 339. 



POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. u 9 

sities of the natural heart to be given up. And besides 
this, the system had a kind of tangible, material, out- 
side character, that suits so well the ritual and cere- 
monial tendencies of our nature. 

The main outlines, as drawn by Gregory, were 
filled up in following times and in various places as 
sinner or priest felt the need. A schedule of crimes, 
and of prices for their absolution, as published by the 
Roman See in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
was a matter of course. It was but a question of time 
to come to a board of ecclesiastical and penal assessors 
and to their Tax Book of Sins. That fund of merit, 
that vast spiritual exchequer, on which indulgences 
are drawn, as bills of sight, was a necessary part of the 
notion of penance, works of merit, and vicarious suf- 
fering. For if one may suffer and work, personally or 
by proxy, for merit, he may overwork. And then 
why may not the surplus go on deposit, subject to 
order ? 

The materials, therefore, for purgatory, and the 
outline-plans of the entire structure, and the structure 
itself well in progress of building, were in the hands 
of Gregory the Great when he died. At his death he 
stood related to the whole system, much as Michael 
Angelo, at his death, did to St. Peter's. That splendid 
structure he had planned, begun, and carried well on 
towards its completion. As the work crept slowly on 
to its grand consummation, the animating genius and 
spirit of the departed architect still presided, witness- 
ing only variations that himself very likely would 



120 PURGATORY. 

have introduced as developments and improvements. 
And if ever finished, or in whatever stage of progress, 
St. Peter's will still be Michael Angelo's. 

The master mind of Gregory still rules the papal 
Church in the perpetuated power of this structure in 
her spiritual architecture. True, like St. Peter's, it 
remains unfinished, and workmen are constantly add- 
ing in details, and with pleasant surprises. The very 
recent and remarkable aid from that ghostly region to 
his late Holiness Pius IX. , in his faculty of memory, 
shows improvements and progress in purgatory, even 
in the nineteenth century. Still, the Roman purga- 
tory is the great Gregory's. 

It remains now to indicate, in summary, what 
material came to his hand, from the drift of the his- 
toric ages, with which he could begin to build, and to 
which his creating mind could add, as a supplement, 
anything needed. Material did lie about him, and in 
such abundance that his constructive and adapting, 
rather than conceptive and creating powers, were 
called in requisition. 

Purgatorial theories and places and processes, well 
preserved and presented in the poetry and philoso- 
phies and religions of the pagan world, embellished 
with much legendary lore, were all about him. At 
that time Rome, semi-Christian and semi-pagan, as 
a centre of letters, was well supplied with all this. 
Not a little of it, as we shall see, had been al- 
ready baptized into the church by the only par- 
tial Christian conversion of some of her leading 



POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 121 

men from the ranks and ambitions of pagan scholar- 
ship. 

We shonld doubtless be more lenient towards those 
who allowed the admission of the doctrine of purga- 
tory into the Christian church, if we could appreciate 
the outside pressure that they were made to feel. All 
the old religions of the East were pervaded by a germ 
of this doctrine, and there was a universal force, out- 
side the Christian system, to incorporate it into the 
dogmas of the church. That ancient and subtle idea 
of a purgatory would, almost of necessity, color any 
new religion that might spring up. This result will 
seem the more natural and probable, when we remem- 
ber that many, educated under those old systems, 
were converted to Christianity, and came into the 
church with the moulding influences of a ripe, though 
pagan scholarship. If new creatures, old things would 
not pass away totally and suddenly, and a reverence 
for ancestral training and faith would hold them, per- 
haps unconsciously. Christianity, therefore, in the 
gristle yet, and not in the bone, would feel their sha- 
ping force. 

While we here turn ourselves, therefore, towards 
the close of this historical disquisition, it will be ne- 
cessary to direct our steps of inquiry backwards and 
upward the stream of human invention and opinion 
to find the very head waters. For, in any genetic 
exposition of this papal theory and practice of purga- 
tory, the sources or springs are found in the historic 
fields, and then back of them in the mythic, shadowy, 



122 PURGATORY. 

and prehistoric marshes of paganism. The Egyptian, 
Judaean, Indian, and Persian philosophies abound 
with it, while it furnishes the heroic staple in the 
classics of Greece and Rome. 

Of all the elements in the old religions that so 
environed young Christianity and foreordained their 
incorporation into it, the dogma of the preexistence 
of the human soul stood preeminent. Out of this no- 
tion there had grown, naturally and among them all, 
the practical theory of a future purgatorial metempsy- 
chosis; and each religious system has shaped this the- 
ory to its own genius. For the idea of preexistence 
almost necessarily requires, certainly has always be- 
gotten, the idea that the soul runs in a serial of mani- 
festations or embodiments, each being probational, till 
the perfect and final one be attained. Theorists and 
dreamers, not knowing the limits of human thought 
on divine problems, and not content to listen only, 
where only the Infinite can speak, have found this 
conception of the soul in serial existences a convenient 
hypothesis on which to hang and air their fancies. 
Thus hypothecating outside of all known limits, they 
have found free range for unlimited follies, and have 
kept up the struggle of the ages by confident leans on 
the unknown past and daring drafts on the unknown 
future — an amazing credit system in the grand com- 
merce of moral and religious truths. 

Sixteen hundred )^ears ago Origen propounded the 
theory that the justice of God can be vindicated for 
the different fates of men in this world only on the 



POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 123 

ground of the theory of preexistence. " It is easy, ' ' 
he says, ' l to understand that there were before rational 
vessels, both clean and unclean; that is, which either 
had or had not purified themselves; and that hence 
each vessel, according to its degree of purity or impu- 
rity, received its place, region, or condition of birth 
and action in this world." "Thus, then, as I may 
say, out of the clay of the same lump of rational minds, 
for certain previous reasons, he formed some unto 
honor and some unto dishonor. n "If our course be 
not marked out according to our works before this life, 
how is it true that it is not unjust in God that the elder 
should serve the younger, and be hated before he had 
done things deserving of servitude and of hatred?"* 

It is one of the curiosities of modern literature to 
find sometimes the debris of effete paganisms. We 
prise, of course, the antiques of the iron or stone age 
of a dead civilisation; and we accord to the antiquary 
worthy credit for successful research among ruins and 
in old mounds, so long as he offers his results as rel- 
ics, and not inventions or improvements. What has 
been foisted into papal Christianity and attempted for 
Protestant, has this pedigree and no more. 

Under the universal and immense outside pres- 
sure on the new religion of the cross, it was too nat- 
ural and almost inevitable, that the church should 
incorporate into her theory and practice the notion 
of preexistence, and its irresistible if not logical infer- 
ence of purgatory. 

* Biblica Sacra, XII. p. 164. 

Purgatory. J 2 



i2 4 PURGATORY. 

We shall probably most briefly and clearly make 
this manifest by beginning on the most distant histor- 
ical borders, where notions of a purgatory prevailed, 
and working our way thence to an accepted and well- 
organized purgatory in the papal Church. Of course 
we turn to Egypt, whose Book of the Dead is sup- 
posed to be older than any other sacred writings in 
the world. 



THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 125 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE PURGATORIAL SYSTEM OF THE ANCIENT 
EGYPTIANS. 

The Egyptian theology set forth distinctly the 
doctrine of a future life ; for when Herodotus tells us 
that they held to the theory of transmigration, he re- 
veals the fact of their belief in a life after death. * 

The system of embalming is supposed by many to 
have sprung from the expectation of continued exist- 
ence after death. As those early Egyptians were not 
spiritual enough to discern between the body and the 
soul and allow for the latter a separate and indepen- 
dent existence, they coupled the notion of immor- 
tality of soul with human embodiment, and so 
sought, by embalming, to purify and perpetuate the 
body for its immortal work of companionship with 
the soul. 

"Let the bodily organs, it was felt, be saved from 
putrefaction, and the spirit also will have something 
left on which to lean for help as her companion and 
receptacle. In virtue of the strength afforded to her 
by this union with the former cause of her vitality, 
she will continue to subsist in some analogous condi- 

* Herodotus, II. p. 123. 



126 PURGATORY, 

tion ; disembodied, it is true, but still associating with 
her previous tenement, and still in some mysterious 
fashion living by its life. ' ' * 

If there are earlier records extant of the supposed 
condition of man beyond the grave than those left to 
us by Ancient Egypt, they are yet to be discovered 
and published ; that is, if we are to accept the schol- 
arly conclusions of a man as careful and reverent and 
Christian as Baron Bunsen. 

The Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead, is com- 
paratively recent authority on our topic, and enlarges 
and enriches our sources of information. Modern 
scholarship has but lately been able to read and make 
it public, though as early in the world as B. C. 2250 
it was, in some of its prayers and hymns, old enough 
to be obscured by glosses and annotations. Even then 
it was so old, says Bunsen, " as to be all but unintelli- 
gible to royal scribes, "f 

This Ritual is, of course, adapted to the Egyptian 
mythology, and parts of it are allegorical, poetic, and 
often mysterious. The lines of thought, however, 
bearing on our topic, run through the entire book, and 
are quite upon its surface ; for the ancient Egyptians 
were fully persuaded of a life beyond the present, and 
a life, too, affected by discriminating rewards and pun- 
ishments. These punishments, moreover, were with 

* Christ and other Masters. By Charles Hardwick, M. A. Part IV. 
Religion of Egypt, p. 82. Cambridge, England, 1859. 

t Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. 5, pp. 88-90. London: 
Longmans, Green, & Co., 1867. 



THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 127 

many, if not all, reformatory, and the subjects of them 
moved on in an ascending grade of being. 

The quotations that we are about to use will be set 
in the best light before the reader if we first outline 
the design, composition, and uses of this Funereal 
Ritual. It sets forth in words the thoughts and feel- 
ings that a soul may be supposed, on the Egyptian 
theory, to have as it departs this life and makes its 
pilgrimage along other stages of being. The ritual is 
to that soul as the liturgy to a Christian worshipper — 
the thoughts of it being presumed from his heart and 
the words of it adapted and given to his lips. Yet it 
is more than a ritual and a liturgy and a litany. It is 
the hymns and prayers and confessions and creeds, the 
hopes and fears and observations, of a soul on its prog- 
ress in the future state. Of all this there are, in the 
edition of Bunsen, and after the editions of Champol- 
lion and of I,epsius, one hundred and sixty-six chap- 
ters. * They might as well be called booklets and sec- 
tions and paragraphs, according to length. 

If these ever made up one volume, the book is lost, 
and only three chapters or sections remain, which had 
been copied out and enclosed with the dead body in 
the processes of embalming and of Egyptian burial. 
These copies have been found on the inner sides of the 
chests enclosing the mummies, on papyrus and pieces 
of linen, and on the wrappings and bandages of the 
mummies, and indeed on whatever would receive the 
writings or hieroglyphics that could properly go into 

* Hardwick makes one hundred and sixty-five, p. 79. 



128 PURGATORY. 

the mummy-case. If these chapters ever had a logical 
or systematic or chronological arrangement, according 
to the dates of their composition or the progress of the 
souls using them, that arrangement is now lost. Ex- 
cepting possibly some of later dates, as of the twenty- 
sixth dynasty and after, they came together miscella- 
neously as discovered or translated, and were like the 
articles of an encyclopaedia unarranged. We now have 
them in groups, so far as a common thought would 
tend to bring them into clusters of chapters, Cham- 
pollion leading in this subdivision and classification. 
These funereal papyri were prepared for the old Egyp- 
tian market, and became articles of trade, blanks be- 
ing left for the name of the purchaser and for any other 
personal items. We have noticed that the same thing 
is done under the papal system in the preparation and 
sale of prayers for the dead and to the saints. These 
forms are for sale in many of the bookstores and 
churches at Rome and elsewhere. 

The theory was that these forms were what the 
soul would need to use on its way when meeting dia- 
bolical and hostile agencies, and they were prepared 
for him to adopt and utter as his own when the occa- 
sion required. Hence they were enclosed about his 
person in the embalming, and placed within his reach, 
as some pagans bury food or implements of war or of 
the chase with their dead. * i To the soul they assured 
a passage from the earth ; a transit through purgatory 
and other regions of the dead ; the entrance into the 
Empyreal Gate by which the souls arrived at the pres- 



THE E G YPTIAN S YSTEM. 1 29 

ence of the Sun [the Egyptian heaven] ; and protec- 
tion from the various liers-in-wait, or adversaries, who 
sought to accuse, destroy, or detain it on its passage or 
destiny. ' ' * 

We have elsewhere intimated that the notion of a 
purgatory is found intimately related to the theory of 
preexistence, and that such a process of purgation 
comes in naturally as one stage in a series of existences. 
This fact shows itself in the Egyptian system of religion. 

* c The deceased, in fact, lived again after death, or, 
according to Egytian notions, did not die again in 
Hades. The first death of the soul was its birth into 

the world, imprisoned in the human form In 

the future or separated state the soul still continued to 

revisit the body The distinction between soul 

and body in the future state is not rigorously kept up, 
and the deceased is often described as if existing as a 
mortal even in the Hades. ' ' f 

Here, then, in Egypt, if not to be found elsewhere 
and nearer, Origen, and after him the author of the 
Conflict of Ages, may find all needed material for that 
scheme of a sinful preexistence of man, a punitive and 
restorative existence in this world, and possibly an- 
other probation in the next. Here, too, on the banks 
of the Nile, we find foundation-stones that, twenty- 
eight hundred years later, reappear on the banks of 
the Tiber, for the superstructure of an under-world 
purgatory, with a mystic confusion and semi-continu- 
ance of soul and body together, and occasional revisits 

* Bunsen, V. p. 134. t Ibid, V. pp. 134, 135. 



i 3 o PURGATORY. 

to tlie upper world. So, as the crowned heads of Eu- 
rope have taken from Egypt her monumental treasures 
and antiquities to adorn their own thrones and reigns, 
he of the triple crown has borrowed from the theolo- 
gians and spiritual regime of that pagan and twilight 
land ecclesiastical strength and ornament for St. Pe- 
ter's. 

But items of fact from the mummy records of that 
dim past will best interest the reader and assure him 
of the pedigree of the purgatory whose genesis we are 
tracing up. The argument, in outline, is this : the 
Egyptian soul lives after death, being born again in 
the Sun — the type of the Egyptian resurrection. It 
reappears beyond the grave, and as the phoenix, their 
emblem of immortality, it enters the celestial gate, or 
heaven. In doing this it goes through regions of dark- 
ness and dangers and hostile daemons, but comes out 
justified, with all corruption of heart cleansed away, 
and so enters on a new and perfect and perpetual life. 

The chapter, section, or paragraph of ritual, found 
in the chest of the embalmed one, is to be uttered by 
him, as occasion calls, in his spirit journey. Some- 
times it is written in the third person, as to be said for 
him. Often there is attached to it a rubric, or expla- 
nation, telling how it is to be used. So, under the 
one hundred and forty-fifth chapter, we read : 

" Said over the passenger, who is in these pictures 
painted in yellow, and over the company of the boat 
of the Sun." The sun is the symbol of heaven, and 
a boat is a symbol of conveyance to heaven. 



THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 131 

1. This Funereal Ritual assumes and declares a 
purgatory similar to the papal as a part of the Egyp- 
tian scheme of salvation. We quote from the seventy- 
second chapter. This is often found in coffins, sar- 
cophagi, and on other monuments and remains of the 
dead. It seemed an indispensable credential, or sacred 
writing, for the soul to utter, that it might gain abso- 
lution and speedy passage and happy entrance to 
Elysium. So the passing soul prays: 

u Oh ye Lords of Truth, without fault, who are 
for ever, cycling for eternity ! Let me pass to the 
earth, I am a spirit in your changes, I prevail through 
your magic spells, I judge through your judgment. 
Save me from the annihilation of this region of the 
Two Truths. . . . Rub ye out [my sin] in the purga- 
tory. The wicked do not prevail against me. Do 
not turn me out of your doors. ' ' * 

The one hundred and forty-eight chapter has the 
title of The Staircases of the House of Osiris. This 
is to be recited to facilitate the passage of the deceased 
through the mystical region^of Hades. What these 
staircases may mean, of which there are seven, it is 
impossible as yet to tell ; but the implication is that 
the soul passes that way, and from the names of the 
keepers of them, the way is evidently beset with 
dangers and purifying trials. Of the first it is written, 
u The name of its keeper is Firepasser;" of the second, 
4 ' The name of its guardian is Fireface ;" of the fourth, 
u The name of its guardian is Purgation;" of the 

* Bunsen V. pp. 143, 214, 215. 



i 3 2 PURGATORY. 

sixth, "The name of its guardian is Bringer of 
Fire." 

Similar to this are the one hundred and forty- 
ninth and fiftieth chapters, the rituals by which the 
soul is supposed to pass through the fourteen abodes 
of Hades. Under this religious passport for the 
ghostly pilgrim the soul goes, according to the rubric, 
1 ' traversing the secret places in Hell, prevailing against 
the Evil, passing the secret valleys, the mouth and 
path of which are unknown. ' ' The purgatorial horrors 
of this section of the soul's journey will appear in 
some quotations. 

1 ' Oh, Father of the gods, Mother of the gods in 
Hades ! save from every evil thing, from all evil 
deriders, or pollution, from all evil liers-in-wait, from 
the wicked netting of the dead [deficient] gods, spirits, 
quick or dead!" "Oh, abode of the spirits! There 
is no sailing through it. It is of flame, of smoking 
fire. " " Oh, great secret abode ! Oh, the very tall 
hill in Hades ! . . . There is a snake on it, Sati is his 
name. He is about seventy cubits in his coil. He 
lives by decapitating the condemned spirits in Hades. ' ' 
t ' The spirits belonging to it [Hades] are seven cubits 
in their thighs; they live as wretched shades." 
1 ( Open your road. I pass by your faces passing to 
the good West. . . . No god comes out against me 
or opposes his face to me. If any condemned spirit, 
male or female, sets his mouth against me, or any 
male or female devil comes to me on that day, he falls 
at the block, ' ' loses his head. c ' There is a snake there, 



THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 133 

Ruhak is his name. He is about seven cubits in the 
length of his back, living off the dead, strangling 
their spirits. Go back, Ruhak, biting with the mouth 
to catch his fishes, fascinating or striking cold with 
his eyes. Draw thy teeth, weaken thy venom to me, 
overthrowing and prostrating me through it. Empty 
is thy poison in this land." u Do not take me to the 
block, do not strangle my soul, as they wish to do 
to me; I am the passenger of the northern horizon. " 
" Oh, the secret place of destruction of the gods, 
which has terrified the spirits not knowing its name ! 
There is neither going in nor out of it. The great 
god who is in it, he has terrified the gods or spirits; 
with his terror he has terrified the spirits or the con- 
demned by his roaring. It has opened with fire; the 
blasts are stifling the nostril." "Oh, the place of 
waters ! None of the dead can stand in it. Its water 
is of fire, its flow is of fire, it glows with smoking fire; 
if wished, there is no drinking it. The thirst of those 
who are in it is inextinguishable. Through the 
greatness of its terror, and the magnitude of its fear, 
the gods, the damned, and the spirits look at its 
waters from a distance. Their thirst is inextinguish- 
able; they have no peace; if they wish they cannot 
escape it. n 

Of these gloomy and fearful abodes Bunsen well 
says, "The description of these regions is in every 
way horrible. They are terrible to the gods them- 
selves, not only as being inhabited by fearful demons, 
but in some instances as regions of fiery flames, rival- 



134 PURGATORY. 

ling in all their horrors the Phlegethon, or burning 
stream of the Greek Hades. A similar series of regions 
is described on the sarcophagus of the monarch Nekh- 
therhebi in the infernal purgatory. .... The halls 
are ten in number, and the groans and screams of the 
damned burst on the ear of the passer-by in a mingled 
chorus of agony and confusion. They howl as lions, 
roar as bulls, squall like tom-cats, tinkle as brass, and 

buM with the incessant hum of bees They 

give an esoteric notion of the nature of the regions of 
the damned, rivalling the cold Hades of Homer, or 
the hotter hell of a Dante or a Milton. Whether they 
were of a purgatorial nature, or the wicked were 
detained there, does not appear, but a more minute 
examination of the principal tombs and sarcophagi of 
the kings will hereafter throw a fuller light upon the 
nature of the Egyptian Hades."* 

2. This Funereal Ritual of the Egyptians shows pur- 
gation of the departed by fire, after the manner of the 
papal Romans. The departing spirit looked forward 
with dread to the boiling flames of the Egyptian fire 
river in the under world. To protect him against 
these the celestial waters are provided, the mystic 
Nile. In the seventy-first chapter the embalmed one, 
speaking from his mummy-case, after the words of his 
enclosed ritual-speech, says, "I am the Hawk within 
the bandages, passing through the earth out of the 

case, or the doors Oh, seven Chief Powers at 

the arm of the Balance, the day of judgment, cutting 

* Egypt's Place in History, V. pp. 152, 153. 



THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 135 

off heads, breaking necks, destroying hearts, making 
blows in the Pool of Fire." The hawk was the 
symbol of the soul in its death-passage from the mortal 
to the immortal. 

In its passage to Elysium, or heaven, the symbol 
of which is the sun, the soul must pass this Phlegethon, 
and is represented as going by boat; and in the one 
hundred and fiftieth chapter there is reference to this 
soul-boat and to the river of fire. The difficulties and 
dangers of the passage over it seem almost insuperable. 
4 ' Oh, abode of the spirits ! There is no sailing through 
it. It silences the spirits. It is of flame, and of 
smoking fire. ' ' 

In the one hundred and thirtieth chapter the 
passage of the soul in the sun-boat to the sun is 
represented. As the Ritual is assumed to be divine 
or inspired, or the words of the gods put into the lips 
of the passing souls, so sometimes a god personifies the 
soul and speaks as if he were the soul. It is so in this 
chapter. The ghost-man on his* voyage, and standing 
in his sun-boat, and speaking of himself, says, ' c The 
Osiris corrects his faults, he delights the Sun, and 
Osiris [the real god]. He has made his boat, he has 

gone forth There are no shades where he is. 

He has not been turned back by the Sun, or by 
Osiris; he has not been turned away for what he has 
done with his hands. The Osiris does not walk in 
the Valley of Darkness, he does not go in the Pool of 
the Damned. He is not in the fissure a moment. He 
knows no terror in the place in which he is, for he 

Purgatory. I j 



136 PURGATORY, 

can take his head behind the block of Setp." That 
is, he is immortal now, and decapitation in Hades 
will not destroy him. 

One other case may be cited, illustrating the point 
that the Egyptians and Romanists alike have purga- 
tion by fire for their departed dead. In the ninety- 
eighth chapter of this Book of the Dead the soul is 
represented as standing in the Boat of the Sun and 
sailing for Elysium. In the passage he must cross 
this fiery lake, or Egyptian Phlegethon. Having 
passed this terrible and dreaded section in the soul- 
journey, the departed one says triumphantly in his 
liturgy, U I see I have not lain down, I stand, I live, 

I rise as a god I have flown, as a hawk, out of 

the net of the great destroyer. I pass from earth to 

heaven My arms pull the paddle, I go along 

to the never tranquil gods I have brought the 

ropes, stopping the wicked as I go along in the boat 
of Ptah [second life]. I have come from the Scalding 
Pools, from the Flaming Fields, alive from that great 

Pool I stand in the boat, I pass the waters, I 

stand in the boat, I pass the god. I stand and come 
forth from the mud, towed along. The gates of 
S'Khem have opened to me." 

The case is evident. The similarity, almost the 
sameness of the Egyptian and the Papal fires of Pur- 
gatory flash up from old histories. If the papal are 
more clear in their lurid glare, and better outlined to 
our sight, and if they appear as better adapted to the 
soul needing and suffering them, we must remember 



THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 137 

that they are two thousand years and more nearer to 
to us. It is a long way, historically, from Rome to 
Thebes, from the Tiber to the Nile. 

3. This Funereal Ritual of the Egyptians shows 
that souls, having passed purgatory, come forth into 
Elysium justified, as in the Papal System. It will be 
enough, under this head, to make a few quotations 
from the ritual declarations of the soul as it passes 
along and finally enters the better land: 

4 4 1 have raised myself as a hawk coming out of 
his ^gg. ... I rise and make myself entirely as a 
good hawk of gold, whose head is in shape of a phoe- 
nix. ... I have prevailed against those making 
watch for me. ' ' Chapter LXX VII. 

i 4 1 have passed the secret roads. ... I have risen 
as a divine hawk. ... I have crossed those who 
guard the blocks, having my head and my hands. ' ' 
The loss of the soul in Hades was well illustrated by 
that familiar chopping off of hands and heads in old 
Egypt. In the under-Egypt there was a demon heads- 
man to decapitate the hopelessly wicked. ' ' A road 
has been made to me. . . . Let me pass the empyreal 
gate. Guardians of heaven, guardians of earth, open 
a path to me. ' Let there be no stoppage to me. I 
reach thy place, O Osiris ! Lend me thy strength, O 
Osiris. ' ' Chapter LXXVIII. 

11 O ye Lords of Eternity, let me come to you. I am 
pure; I am divine; I am spiritualized; I am strong; 
I am become a soul; I prevail. ... I rise as a god 
from men. . . . Glory has been given to me by those 



i33 PURGATORY. 

who are in the gate in this mortal body." Chapter 
IvXXIX. 

c ' O gods, delicious is the smell of your fire which 
comes out of the horizon. . . . Guardian of the cor- 
ner, lead me. Give me thy arm. I keep a watch in 
the Pool of Fire. I come by [my] efforts. I have 
come, having the writing. ... I have dissipated my 
sins ; I have destroyed my failings, for I have got rid 
of the sins which detained me on earth. O door- 
keepers, I have made roads." Chapter LXXXVI. 

Perhaps it will be enough to introduce one more 
citation under this head. These scraps of liturgy, 
inscribed or enclosed in the mummy-cases, had fre- 
quently rubric reading or directions for use on their 
margins, and sometimes vignettes or drawings illus- 
trative of the lesson of the liturgy. Prefixed to the 
chapter from which we are about to quote is the vig- 
nette of a basin of Purgatorial Fire, with four jets of 
fire. The soul is taught to say in the liturgy, 4 i Ex- 
tract ye all the evil out of me, obliterate ye my faults, 
annihilate my sins; guard ye and give ye me to pass 
the pylon [gateway] to go from the plains. " Then 
the Gods of Justice are represented as responding, 
u Thou may est go; we obliterate all* thy faults, we 
annihilate all thy sins. Thou hast been severed from 
the world; we dissipate all thy sins. Thou hast sev- 
ered thyself from earth; thou hast dissipated all the 
sin which detained thee." Chapter CXXVI. 

The case is plain. Certain conditions being sup- 
plied, the papal purgatory is a mere question of devel- 



THE E G YPTIAN S YSTEM. 139 

opment from these Egyptian germs. Add the time, 
two thousand years, the philosophies that are waiting 
to come, and the Christian revelations of a future life, 
clouded and corrupted, and Egypt's Book of the Dead 
may be published at Rome, in revised edition, as a 
Christian volume, under Vatican imprint. 



13* 



Mo PURGATORY, 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PURGATORIAL SYSTEM OF THE ANCIENT 

HINDOOS. 

In tracing the pedigree of the theory under inves- 
tigation we proceed naturally from Egypt to India; 
for in the birth of the nations that became historic 
and made religious records, the land of the Hindoos 
comes next into prominence when we leave the valley 
of the Nile. When Israel was in Egypt, the people 
of the Pharaohs had a well-defined religious system. 
Their eschatology — the dying man, the migratory 
soul, purgatorial fires, and other pains besetting the 
way of the wanderer to a better land, and the liturgy 
for the soul in its passage — has been outlined in the 
preceding chapter. It has been shown, too, how far 
resemblances would suggest these Egyptian notions as 
germinal or protoplastic to the papal theories of pur- 
gatory. 

When Israel was going out of Egypt in the fif- 
teenth century before Christ, the authors of the Hin- 
doo system were coming into Hindostan. They came 
down from the heights of Central Asia, whence also, 
as from the primitive Asiatic cradle, the Chinese crept 
off eastward in their infancy, and the Iranians west- 
ward. The Hindoo invaders subjugated where they 
did not exterminate the prior nation, and the rem- 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 141 

nants became the Shudra or lowest Hindoo caste. 
The religious subjugation was never total, and to this 
day remnants of the former religion still linger in the 
Deckan, while Brahminism there is proportionally 
weak. 

The main sources of the information that we are 
about to use, in tracing the purgatorial pedigree from 
the Nile to the Tiber, are the Vedas and the Institutes 
of Manu. Sir William Jones and other eminent Ori- 
entalists fix the composition of the former at about 
fifteen hundred years before Christ. * The latter are 
supposed to have been w r ritten somewhere between the 
tenth and the twelfth centuries before the Christian era. 

According to these authorities our life is a series of 
existences, past and to come, midway in which is this 
earthly or human one. The present is to be immedi- 
ately followed by a punitive and purifying one, lead- 
ing into a higher grade in another order of being. 
This idea of serial and progressive existence is central 
and permeating in the systems of religion that have 
shaped the sacred notions of Central and Southern 
Asia from Persia to the Chinese Wall. 

The Brahmins ( l believe that souls . . . were pro- 
duced long before the formation of this present world ; 
that they were originally in a state of purity, but that 
having sinned, they were thrown down into the bod- 
ies of men and beasts, according to their respective 
demerits, so that the body, where the soul resides, is a 
sort of dungeon or prison. After a certain number of 

* See Johnson, p. S3, 



1 42 PURGATORY. 

transmigrations, all souls shall be reunited to their 
origin, readmitted into the society of the gods, and be 
deified. ' ) * 

The dogma of preexistence was, with the Hindoo, 
an essential part, and indeed the prior half of his doc- 
trine of immortality. Those old observers and philos- 
ophers noted the human fact of all centuries and lati- 
tudes, that wealth and want, success and failure, joy 
and sorrow, come with an apparently blind indiscrim- 
ination on the good and the bad. Virtue and vice 
receive alike one and the same tempest and dew, as if 
right and wrong were not inherent in the subject of a 
divine government, and merit and demerit were not 
discriminated by the governor. Hence they made the 
assumption of a preexistent life of responsibility and 
of unsettled accounts, and regarded this life as a neces- 
sary sequence in the growth of being, and administered 
as a system of rewards and punishments, f 

For men of their narrow range of thought and 
declarative logic, in that preface age to the world's 
volumes and centuries, this assumption solved doubts 
and gave rest. So theories have their cycles of move- 
ment and periodic revolutions across the philosophic 

* Rogers' Religion of the Brahmins, p. 2, ch. 7, and quoted in Ram- 
say, 2 ; p. 356, or 363, note. The Philosophical Principles of Natural and 
Revealed Religion, by the Chevalier Ramsay, Glasgow, 1749, is quite a 
thesaurus of antique learning on the Oriental Religions, and we are 
much indebted to it. 

t The History of India, by J. Talboys Wheeler, pp. 75-78. Oriental 
Religions, by Samuel Johnson, pp. 517-520. Ward's View of the His- 
tory, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos. London edition of 1822, 
vol. III., pp. 391-400. 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 143 

heavens. This one seems to have timed its period by 
its third appearance in an orbit of sixteen hundred 
years. The ' ' Conflict of Ages ! ' is settled first in the 
thirteenth century before Christ, then in the third 
Christian century, and again in the nineteenth. The 
three settlements have a difference of authors, rather 
than of ideas, as a Hindoo, a Greek, and an Ameri- 
can ; and dropping out Origen as merely a ' ' middle 
man" in the commerce of ideas, perhaps the " Con- 
flict" was as logically settled, and as finally, on the 
Ganges as in New England. 

To a Hindoo mind post-existence was a natural 
and logical sequence to preexistence, and the dogma 
of a future life w^as accepted as a matter of course. 
Indeed, existence was unmarked in their religion by 
beginning or end, but w T as simply a series of lives that 
births and deaths opened and closed. "If life was 
followed by death, so death might only be the intro- 
duction into a new life; in other words, after the death 
of the body the soul entered a new body, either of a 
human being or an animal. ' ' * 

1 ' They taught that each successive existence was 
a reward or a punishment exactly proportioned to the 
good or evil deeds that had been performed in previous 
existences ; that the poorest man might enjoy wealth 
and prosperity in the next life by being strictly virtu- 
ous and religious in the present life; and that the most 
powerful sovereign might be condemned to poverty 
and disease in the next life if he failed in his religious 

* J. Talboys Wheeler, p. 72. 



144 PURGATORY. 

duties in the present life. ' ' Yet i ( if the soul be suffi- 
ciently purified from all the passions and desires of 
existence, it will return to the Supreme Spirit of 
Brahma" — the highest heaven of the Hindoo.* 

"The various heavens and hells were merely a 
part of the moral system of the universe, where tran- 
scendent merits might be sufficiently rewarded and 
the greatest crimes be sufficiently punished, "f 

One description of the purgatorial regions of the 
Hindoos is fearfully graphic, making it quite like, and 
hardly improved or surpassed by, the papal. The re- 
semblance to the grosser and more material Roman 
purgatory of the Middle Ages will be noticed at 
once. 

4 ' The wicked have six hundred and eighty-eight 
thousand miles to travel to the palace of Ytimu to re- 
ceive judgment. In some places they pass over a 
pavement of fire ; in others the earth in which their 
feet sink is burning hot ; or they pass over burning 
sands, or over stones with sharp edges, or burning hot; 
sometimes showers of sharp instruments, and at oth- 
ers showers of burning cinders, or scalding water, or 
stones, fall upon them ; burning winds scorch their 
bodies ; every now and then they fall into concealed 
wells full of darkness, or pass through narrow passages 
filled with stones, in which serpents lie concealed ; 
sometimes the road is filled with thick darkness ; at 
other times they pass through the branches of trees, 
the leaves of which are full of thorns ; again they walk 

* J. Talboys Wheeler, p. 73. t Ibid., p. 121. 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 145 

over broken pots or over hard clods of earth, bones, 
putrefying flesh, thorns, or sharp spikes. They meet 
tigers, jackals, rhinoceroses, elephants, terrible giants, 
etc. ; and in some parts they are scorched in the sun 
without obtaining the least shade. They travel naked; 
their hair is in disorder ; their throats, lips, etc. , are 
parched ; they are covered with blood or dirt ; some 
wail and shriek as they pass along ; others are weep- 
ing ; others have horror depicted in their countenan- 
ces. Some are dragged along by leathern thongs tied 
around their necks, waists, or hands ; others by cords 
passed through holes bored in their noses ; others by 
the hair, the ears, the neck, or the heels ; and oth- 
ers are carried, having their legs and heads tied to- 
gether. } ' * 

All this is coarse and physical, like the Roman 
purgatory, yet it accorded with their highest concep- 
tion of spiritual existence. ' c Manu represents the vital 
spirit of the wicked as furnished with a coarser body, 
expressly provided with nerves susceptible of extreme 

torment, "f 

The purgatorial stages or departments, for different 
kinds and grades of sinners, are outlined in the sacred 
books of the Hindoos with all the graphic and horrid 
characteristics that their dark minds could imagine. 
Their likeness and almost identity with the papal 

* A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos. 
By William Ward. London, 1822, vol. ITT. p. 375. See also, India, An- 
cient and Modern. By David O. Allen, D. D., pp. 409-413. 

t Johnson's Oriental Religions, p. 545. 



146 PURGATORY. 

abodes of the suffering will be noticed by the careful 
reader. There are for the victims, as assorted and 
grouped according to their demerits, the region of 
great darkness, the enclosure of rabid dogs, and an- 
other of ravening beasts, and another of all venomous 
and deadly reptiles, constantly worrying and lacerating 
the inmates ; the chambers of burning copper and of 
boiling oil ; the halls of red-hot iron machinery, a kind 
of under-ground Inquisition, to sear and tear the flesh 
of the guilty ; burning iron images of females for the 
embrace of adulterers ; precipices and almost bottom- 
less rocky and thorny ravines for falling sinners, with 
birds of prey to pick out their eyes and feed on their 
living flesh. 

No wonder, as Ward says, "The Hindoos in gen- 
eral manifest great fear of future punishment. Some- 
times, after committing a dreadful sin, these fears are 
expressed to a friend in some such words as these : c I 
have committed a shocking crime, and I must endure 
great and long-continued torments, but what can I do ? 
There is no remedy now. ' Sometimes these fears are 
so great that they drive a man to perform many works 
of merit, particularly works of atonement. If the of- 
fender be rich, they extort large sums of money from 
him, which are expended in gifts to bramhtins, or in 
religious ceremonies. If he be poor, he bathes in the 
Ganges with more constancy, or goes on pilgrimages 
to different holy places."* 
! "The Hindoos profess to have a great reliance 

* Ward's View, vol. III. p. 387, 388. 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 147 

upon the merit of their works, though they do not 
appear to be satisfied that any one ceremony will pro- 
cure future happiness. One Hindoo travels to the 
south, another to the north, to obtain some salvation- 
giving charm; but after all, he listens to any new nos- 
trum with as much eagerness as though he had hith- 
erto done nothing towards obtaining heaven. King 
Indru-doomnti, by performing austerities, offering sac- 
rifices, and presenting gifts to bramhtins, obtained the 
power of going to heaven whenever he chose. ' ' * 

Of course many ceremonies for the dying and the 
departed are performed to ease and shorten the passage 
to the better land. So the dying one on the banks of 
the Ganges, if he has not delayed preparation till mind 
and body fail, orders the gift of a black cow to a bram- 
htin, that he may not be scalded at the boiling lakes in 
the middle land. Other and varied preparations are 
prescribed in the Hindoo Ritual for the dying, and 
they are attended to with great carefulness. 

After death there follow many studied rites and 
costly offerings for the repose of the soul. c ' The offer- 
ings made in a person's name after his decease, and 
the ceremonies which take place on the occasion, are 
called his shraddhti, which the Hindoos are very anx- 
ious to perform in a becoming manner. The son who 
performs these rites obtains great merit ; and the de- 
ceased is hereby satisfied, and, by gifts to the bram- 
huns in his name, obtains heaven, "f 

We invite particular attention to these rites and 

* Ward's View, vol. III. pp. 380, 381. t Ibid., p. 355. 

Purgatory. iJj. 



148 PURGATORY. 

offerings for the repose of a departed soul, and their 
comparison with the Romish ritual for the same end. 
The similarity is striking in the processes to relieve 
the departed of suffering and hasten the soul in its sad 
purgatorial journey to the land of rest. 

At death the soul becomes a ghost and assumes a 
diminutive body, not larger than one's thumb, and so 
enters the realms and custody of the god of the 
dead. Here for a season punishment is inflicted, and 
the body is enlarged for capacity to receive it. If 
the ritual for the repose of the soul be properly per- 
formed for a year, the person passes into another body 
and on to the heaven of the forefathers; but if ne- 
glected, the poor sufferer is doomed to long delays 
and wanderings, in his miserable little ghost-body. * 

In the presence of an assembly, large or small, 
according to the rank of the deceased, the son or near 
relative produces sixteen gifts, and sprinkling them 
with holy water and repeating prayers, he offers them 
in the names of the deceased, that the departed may 
obtain heaven. Presents are then made to the priests, 
the sixteen gifts and other marked ones, are bestowed 
on the head brahmins, and so the first ceremonies 

* We are tracing in this volume the pedigree, or transmission of ideas. 
An illustrative case comes in here incidentally. The dying Hindoo could 
not start off speedily and happily for his heaven, if deprived of the rites 
of burial. A thousand years later Virgil reproduces the same theory. 

Portilor ille, Charon: hi, quos vehit unda sepulti. 
Nee ripas datur horrendas, n~c rauca fluenta 
Transportare prius quum sedibus ossa quierunt. 
Centum errant annos volitantque haec littora circum. 

JEn. Lib. VI. 325 et seq. See also, Odes of Horace. Lib. 1 : 28. 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 



149 



are passed. Then follows the offering of five calves, 
with incantations frequently to keep off evil spirits, 
and a great variety of eatables, flowers, cloth, paint, 
lamps, etc. These all eventually go to the priests. 
The whole concludes with a feast to the multitude 
and presents all round, Sometimes elegant and costly 
bedsteads, gold or silver pitchers and dishes, bowls, 
cups, jugs, and lamp-stands, are among the gifts, up 
to an immense value. The head servant of Mr. Has- 
tings expended one million two hundred thousand 
rupees, six hundred thousand dollars, in the ceremo- 
nials for the repose of the soul of his mother. Many 
beggar themselves in these provisions for their de- 
parted friends; and so priestly is the Hindoo law, and 
so interwoven into society this system of purgatorial 
relief, that u a person cannot inherit an estate who 
has not performed shraddhu." For if these rites are 
not properly and duly performed, intense and pro- 
tracted misery attends the departed, and purgatory is 
prolonged indefinitely. A new body, birth, promo- 
tion or upward grade is denied to the soul in its 
little ghost-body, and it wanders and sorrows forages.* 
If we consider what departing sinners are led to 
expect, by the Hindoo creed, on their way to the 
court of the dead, and during their enforced residence 
there, we shall see why the sympathies and fortunes 
of the living would be engrossed to the utmost to 
hasten their deliverance. "They have to travel six 
hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles to the court 

* Ward's View, Vol. III. p. 354-362. 



ISO PURGATORY. 

* 

of Yama [the judge of the dead]. In some places 
the road consists of stones, mud and sand, burning 
hot showers of sharp instruments, burning cinders, 
and scalding water fall upon them. They fall into 
concealed wells, grope their way through darkness, 
and meet tigers and other dreaded animals, ' ? as we have 
already shown. ' c At length they arrive at the court of 
Yama, whose appearance is terrible; his height is 
two hundred and forty miles, the hairs of his body are 
as long as a palm-tree, his voice is as loud as thun- 
der, his eyes send out flames of fire, and the noise of 
his breathing is like a roaring tempest. His conduct 
towards them corresponds to his terrible appear- 
ance."* No wonder the Hindoo dreaded death, and 
went through such strange and ineffable sufferings 
and tortures, and received so much aid, when de- 
parted, from living friends, that this purgatorial region 
might be wholly avoided, or the journey through it 
be hastened and shortened ! 

In scanning this religious system of old India we 
find many points in their eschatology agreeing stri- 
kingly with those in the Papal System. In the stage 
immediately following death we find purifying and 
punitive and restorative suffering; the physical struc- 
ture and furnishings of that intermediate region, with 
all the attendant horrors and dangers and agonies, would 
answer equally for the popular purgatory of the tenth 
century after Christ as for that in the tenth before. 
In passing backward from Rome into India we have 

* Allen's India, pp. 410, 411. 



THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 151 

become familiar with pavements of fire, boiling oil 
and water, and red hot iron and copper machines of 
torture. Then we find coming in at the proper place, 
works of merit and atonement by the guilty to avoid 
all this, or gain at least an easier and earlier entrance 
to heaven. Friends interpose by offerings and pray- 
ers and pains to be put to the account and relief of 
the departed, and so gain repose to their souls; all 
which is with great expense to the relatives, and to 
the enriching of the priests. Does it not look as if 
the Vatican had infringed on the spiritual patent 
of the pagoda for passing souls along to glory? 



14* 



iS2 PURGATORY. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PURGATORY OF ZOROASTER AND THE PARSI. 

In tracing the development and growth of this 
doctrine along the centuries to its completion in the 
papacy, we pass from India, in order, to the Persia of 
the ancients. In this we, to a degree, retrace our 
steps from Hindostan to those Asiatic highlands where 
we found the emigrating germs of the Hindoo peoples 
and religion. Prior to that emigrating, and while yet 
the coming nations of Eastern and Southern and West- 
ern Asia were in one family stock, called the Aryan, 
a common religion underlay the whole, and from it 
there started off, as sects or growths, the religious sys- 
tems that have characterised Asia from the earliest 
historic periods to the present time. Rawlinsori says 
we may go back to u a time when the Aryan race was 
not yet separated into two branches, and the Easterns 
and Westerns, the Indians and Iranians, had not yet 
adopted the conflicting creeds of Zoroastrianism and 
Brahminism. ' ' * 

* Ancient Monarchies, vol. III., p. 94. John Murray. London, 
1865. 

"There are some circumstances which might dispose us to believe that 
the ancient religions of Persia and of India were connected in their ori- 
gin." Malcolm's Persia, I. p. 493. 

" We are able, by the aid of the Indian Veda, to trace out with some 
distinctness the form of the original Aryan faith held before the separa- 
tion of the Indian and Persian nations." The Avesta, etc. By William 
D. Whitney. Journal of the American Oriental Society, V. p. 378. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 153 

It is, of course, impossible to date the beginning of 
the system, Iranic, Median, or Persian, now called 
Zoroastrianism ; for any religious system of human 
origin has a growth only and no birth, an era but no 
epoch. Zoroaster discovered, systematized, and aug- 
mented preexisting materials, and so gave a name to 
the system. In ages following others modified the 
system. 

Scholars have been much divided as to the age in 
which Zoroaster flourished. Sir William Ouseley, in 
his travels in Persia, places him about five hundred 
years before Christ. A learned Parsi of Bombay, Mr. 
Furdoonjee, with great show of authorities, assigns 
him to the sixth century. To this agree such English 
scholars as Prideaux, Thomas Hyde, and Sir John 
Malcolm. Gui^ot places him in the seventh century, 
while the learned Dr. Martin Haug, who is much 
at home in this province of literature, thinks that 
Zoroaster must have lived at least fifteen hundred 
years before Christ. Rawlinson would not shorten 
this period by more than a century. This would 
place the life of Zoroaster almost parallel with that 
of Moses, or closely following, Moses having died, 
according to the common chronology, B. C. 1451. 

But be this as it may, a few centuries either way 
among scholars, this system of religion, variously 
called Iranian, Median, Assyrian, Chaldean, Parsi, 
and Zoroastrian, flourished in the days of Solomon, 
Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and was a temptation to 
the Jews, before and after the captivity, that they 



i S4 PURGATORY. 

did not wholly withstand. The sacred writings of 
this religion once embraced twenty-one books, many 
of which are now lost. Those extant are called The 
Avesta. No one man is supposed to have written 
them all, and their composition is regarded as an ac- 
cumulation of many years, perhaps centuries, much 
after the manner of the Holy Scriptures. 

We pass to the doctrine of the Avesta concerning 
the future life. The souls of men were created in the 
long ages past and retained in the realms of light. 

The ancient Persian and the Oriental religions 
generally are replete with this notion of a happy state 
of the soul, preceding the present, in which it aposta- 
tized; and of one succeeding the present, in which it 
will go through an expiatory and redemptive process. 
Pletho, in his commentaries on the Chaldean oracles, 
says that " the Magi, Zoroaster's followers, with many 
others, believe in the immortality of the human soul, 
and that she descended from on high, to serve a mor- 
tal body, to labor with it for some time, to animate 
and adorn it as much as she can, and then return 
again. The soul, when above, has several abodes, 
one luminous, another dark, and some filled with an 
equal mixture of light and darkness. Sometimes she 
sinks into the body from the luminous abode, and after 
a virtuous behavior returns again to the same place; 
but if evil, she retires to a worse place, in proportion 
to her conduct in life."* 

But it is their destiny at length to assume human 

* The Chevalier Ramsay, vol. II. pp. 419, 420. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 155 

bodies, and to go over the path of probation, called 
The Way of the Two Destinies. The good and the 
virtuous of this life, as well as the bad and the vic- 
ious, pass on together through death to a tribunal, 
where Orma^d, the righteous judge, separates them 
for due reward and punishment. 

Of that double world beyond we have a graphic 
and glowing account in the fiction of a tour through 
it and journal, an artifice so common in mythology. 
We have illustrious examples of this, where Homer 
passes Ulysses through the under world, in his Elev- 
enth Book of the Odyssey, and Virgil, ^neas, in his 
Sixth of the iEneid. Dante's Inferno and St. Pat- 
rick's Purgatory come in with the same class of wri- 
tings, and have the same general design. These 
fancies, with many other similar and minor ones, 
mirror the prevalent religious sentiments of the age, 
embellished more or less by the poetic imaginations 
and liberties of the authors. 

The old Avestan or Parsi faith has not failed to 
avail itself of this expedient and commentary, and 
some quotatious from the Revelations of Ardai Viraf 
will serve as a good foundation for us on which to 
place the framework of the purgatory of Zoroaster. 

About 202 A. D. Ardeshir Babegan obtained the 
Persian monarchy, after putting to death ninety petty 
kings or princes in the opposition. As the ancient 
religion of the empire had been much weakened, and 
specially by the conquest of Alexander, 330 B. C, 
and its consequences, and the ancient creeds and ritu- 



156 PURGATORY. 

als quite obscured, the king set himself to their resto- 
ration. He convoked an assembly of forty thousand 
of the sacred scholars of the realm, and unfolded to 
them his purpose. Then, by successive reductions 
and elections, to four thousand, and then to four hun- 
dred, and then to forty, and finally to seven, a choice 
commission was obtained to execute the royal purpose. 
These seven scholars, doctors and priests, undertook 
the restoration of the doctrines of Zoroaster and the 
Magian faith in its truth and purity and sanctity. 
The work was accomplished by sending the soul of 
one of their number on the tour of the spirit land 
through its two great compartments of joy and sorrow. 
With much Oriental ceremonial his departure is pre- 
pared, and his return anxiously and awfully awaited, 
while the six companions watch his soulless body — 
the king's court and the forty thousand standing an 
outside guard at reverent distance from the temple of 
ceremony. At the close of the seventh night Ardai 
Viraf returns to his forsaken body and to conscious- 
ness, and his report of the spiritual pilgrimage of the 
under world constitutes The Revelations of Ardai 
Viraf.* 

His declared purpose in the revelation is * ' that all 
people might know the rewards for the good, and the 
punishments that attended the wicked doer," in both 
heaven and hell, " in order that heresy and schism be 

* The Ardai Viraf Nameh : Translated from the Persian and Guze- 
ratee Versions. With Notes and Illustrations. By J. A. Pope. Lon- 
don, 1816. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 157 

banished from the earth, and that the worship of the 
true God be restored to its wonted purity. " 

In the first entrance of Ardai Viraf into the spirit 
land, he passes Chin vat — u the bridge of the gather- 
ing"— over which all the dead must pass immediately 
after leaving the body. It is narrow as the edge of a 
knife-blade, very high over awful chasms and torrents, 
and exceedingly difficult and dangerous in the pas- 
sage. Only the righteous succeed in the going over, 
while the wicked fall into the lower depths. 

After passing, Ardai Viraf came to the throne of 
the righteous judge, on the one side of whom the 
golden scales of justice were hung aloft, and on the 
left were five thousand reporting angels, all whose 
words the judge could hear at the same time, and all 
whose written reports he could read at one glance. 
Here among the justified he meets all those of his own 
family who had died in the true faith. But not to 
follow the pilgrim from place to place, through each 
consecutive hour, let points of observation here and 
there suffice. 

Here is a group in neutral apathy; they have 
neither joy nor sorrow, since in this life their good and 
evil deeds balanced each other. They can go neither 
to the good nor the bad, and their punishment, if it 
may be so called, is to realize the stupidity and degra- 
dation of neutrality. In the second heaven, for there 
are seven in an ascending grade, he found certain 
happy to that second degree, for a good use of wealth 
in life; but they could never go up higher, because 



158 PURGATORY. 

for indolence here they had done no better. So those 
who have been sluggish in their devotions never rise 
above the third heaven; and those who had carelessly 
used wet and green wood for the sacred fire were 
found detained in the fourth heaven, whereas they 
should have kept a supply of dry wood twelve months 
ahead. The practical turn that this Revelation takes, 
at points now and then, is quite refreshing. The lone 
soul is even led to a river made up of the sap and 
water from the green and wet wood of lasy janitors at 
the fire temples. * 

The sixth heaven showed philanthropists, the 
friends of the widow and orphan, and good legislators 
and rulers, and the devout ministers in holy things, 
and heroes who died for the right, and faithful wives. 
All these were in the surpassing splendor of thrones 
and palaces, and pearls, and jewels, and most extra va- 
gent vestments, and charming landscapes, and the 
music of birds, and an atmosphere loaded with the 
richest and sweetest odors. 

After witnessing the yet more surpassing glories of 
the seventh heaven, Ardai Viraf is desired by his two 
conductors to prepare himself to see the abodes of the 
wicked and their torments. He soon arrives at a 
river nine lances deep,f of most offensive odors, and 

* The Parsi have such a religious veneration for fire that no impure 
substances are ever thrown into it, as hair, the trimmings of finger-nails, 
and the floor-dust. In the religious fire, green, decayed or wormy wood, 
and wood of offensive odor is forbidden, while sandal-wood with camphor, 
amber, and other gums of pleasant odor, are much sought. 

t For so the Persians are wont to reckon, a lance being regarded as 
about seven feet. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 159 

abounding with most noxious reptiles, in which very 
many souls are floating. This river is made of the 
rebellious tears of mortals, wept stubbornly for the loss 
of departed friends. The conductors explain by say- 
ing, 4 ' To pray for the souls of the deceased is a duty 
we owe them, and is pleasing to God; but to cry and 
mourn is sinful in his sight. ' ' Soon after, our pilgrim 
perceives a soul just arrived, and fallen into the fright- 
ful chasms under the Bridge, and the prey of horrid 
demons. Near by a man is seen hanging from a tree 
by one leg, while fiends slice off his living flesh. 
This man had tortured and murdered the faithful of 
God. Another is dying of hunger and thirst, who 
revelled in all good things in this life, and neither 
gave thanks to God nor charity to the needy. A 
woman is seen suspended by the breasts who had been 
an unfaithful wife. Men are urged by demons, and 
with blows and stripes, to drink excessive measures of 
most noxious and offensive mixtures. They were 
traders who had bought by large measures, and sold 
by false and smaller ones, and had mixed water with 
the milk for their customers. One manacled victim 
is tossed about by seventy devils, and flogged with 
serpents for having been a tyrant to his subjects, while 
the tongue of another, much protruding, is covered 
with noxious insects, scorpions, and centipedes. 
1 c This man, ' ' said the interpreting conductor, l ( was 
a great sinner, a fomenter of disputes, a liar, a slan- 
derer, and of the most evil disposition. ' ' 

In one department of these horrible regions Ardai 

Purgatory, T r? 



160 PURGATORY. 

Viraf finds another unfortunate whom many devils 
were cutting to pieces, regardless of his painful and 
piteous cries. The explanation is given : "This man 
was a wanton destroyer of animals, a man who never 
reflected that though animals were given by God for 
the use of man, yet he was not permitted to kill or 
torture them wantonly. ' ! This poor sufferer had been 
no member of a society for the protection of our dumb 
animals. The body of another is found totally im- 
mersed in suffering, with the exception of one foot. 
He had lived the life of a sluggard, in indolence and 
in ill-temper over the least useful act ; yet once he 
pushed with that foot the feed within reach of a tired 
and starving sheep, and so it is exempt. A group is 
found with their flesh dropping, in diseases, from their 
bones. They had delighted in turning men away from 
integrity in business, and from the virtues and reli- 
gion. One is pressed down and crushed under a moun- 
tain weight. He had forced collections from the poor, 
and foreclosed mortgages and taken exhorbitant rents 
and usury. A multitude of fiends surround a poor 
wretch, while they flog him with snakes, and force 
him to rake granite chips in a quarry with his finger- 
nails. 

The explanation is significant, while it contains 
the key to the continuance of these purgatorial pains. 
"This man possessed himself of his neighbor's land 
under false pretences, and has left it to his son ; and 
as long as it remains in his family, so long will this 
punishment endure.'' Here is the very fulcrum of 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 161 

power in the papal theory of purgatory. The amount 
and the continuance of those under- world pains are in 
the hands of the living. 

Yet this admonition is sent back by Ardai Viraf to 
the living: u L,et them not believe that punishments 
will be remitted at the intercession of those they leave 
behind ; nor will the prayers of priests avail them ; as 
they sow, so they will reap ; neither reward nor pun- 
ishment will be omitted. Proclaim this to the world, 
and let the dreams of carelessness and negligence be 
banished for ever. ) l 

In this old Avestan theology sin had a measure of 
due punishment that must be meted out to the guilty 
one, and then he could go free. It was for a later age 
to found and fund an ecclesiastical bank of merit, hav- 
ing for its capital the extra good works of apostles, 
martyrs, and saints. The idea was yet to come that 
by a kind of spiritual brokerage in cash or prayers, or 
the mass, this merit could be checked out and applied 
to the relief and even instant restoration of those suf- 
fering souls. 

With extended and varied observations our spirit- 
pilgrim traversed these gloomy and sorrowful regions ; 
but we need not follow him farther. We have ob- 
tained from him the theory and practice of the purga- 
tory of Zoroaster. 

He returns to the bridge, Chinvat, and finds there 
a great multitude who cannot pass it. Their lamen- 
tation is, " For want of heirs, to hand our name to pos- 
terity, we cannot pass the bridge, but wander up and 



1 62 PURGATORY. 

down in an uncomfortable manner, without enjoy- 
ment. We are in sight of heaven Report to 

our families, O Ardai Viraf, our miserable situation, 
that sons may be adopted in our names, that we may 
be enabled to pass the bridge; and let it be known that 
to hand our names to posterity is one of the highest 
duties we owe our Creator." And so soon as this 
adoption takes place and is known at Chinvat the 
childless one passes over. This theory of the neces- 
sity of heirs, natural or adopted, is common to the 
Zoroastrian, the Hindoo, and the Mohammedan, and 
is compactly stated in the Institutes of Menu, that "a 
man is perfect when he consists of three— his wife, 
himself, and his son. ' ' * 

Ardai Viraf found others at the bridge awaiting 
the arrival, through death, of those whom they had 
injured, and whose forgiveness was indispensable be- 
fore they could pass over into bliss. As the restora- 
tion and happy progress of the former depended on 
adoption, so these awaited the pardon of those whom 
they had offended. In each case human hands could 
pass them along heavenward. 

At the end of the seventh night Ardai Viraf reas- 
cended to the upper air and made his report. 

" Immediately after death," says Rawlinson, "the 
souls of men, both good and bad, proceed together 
along an appointed path to i the bridge of the gather- 
ing, ' Chinvat. This was a narrow road conducting to 
heaven, or paradise, over which the souls of the pious 

* Institutes of Menu, vol. IX. p. 45. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 163 

alone could pass, while the wicked fell from it into the 
gulf below, where they found themselves in the place 
of punishment. ' ' * 

An Avestan fragment thus describes this tribunal : 
1 i On the soaring bridge the soul meets Rashne-rast, 
the angel of justice, who tries those that present them- 
selves before him. If the merits prevail, a figure of 
darling substance, radiating glory and fragrance, ad- 
vances and accosts the justified soul, saying, c I am thy 
good angel; I was pure at the first, but thy good deeds 
have made me purer ;' and the happy one is straight- 
way led to paradise. But when the vices outweight 
the virtues, a dark and frightful image, featured with 
ugliness, and exhaling a noisome smell, meets the con- 
demned soul, and cries, ' I am thy evil spirit; bad my- 
self, thy crimes have made me worse. ' Then the cul- 
prit staggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from 
the di^y causeway, and precipitated into the gulf 
which yawns horribly below. n f 

Of this bridge the A vesta thus speaks: " Creator! 
Where are those tribunes, where do they assemble, 
where do they come together, at which a man of the 
corporeal world gives account for his soul ? . . . . To 
the bridge Chinvat, the created by Ahura-Mazda, 
where they interrogate the consciousness and the soul 
regarding the conduct. ' ' J 

* Ancient Monarchies, vol. III. pp. 115, 116. 

t History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. By W. R. Alger, pp. 
136, 137. G. W. Childs, Philadelphia, 1864. 

% Spiegel's A vesta : Bleeck's translation, Vendidad - Fargard, vol. 
XIX. vv. 89, 96. Hertford, Eng., 1864. 

15* 



164 PURGATORY. 

Elsewhere the departing soul is represented as say- 
ing, ' c I enter on the shining way ; may the fearful 
terror of hell not overcome me ! May I step over the 
bridge Chinvat, may I attain paradise with much per- 
fume and all enjoyments and all brightness."* "I 
praise the mid-world, the self-created, and the bridge 
Chinvat, created by Ahura-Masda. " f 

The ' ' mid-world ' ' here is Mi§ vana, i l the w r orld 
in which the souls are placed whose good and bad 
deeds are equally balanced. Migvana is between 
heaven and earth, and the souls in it have to suffer 
both cold and heat." J 

An intermediate state for the dead, and punish- 
ments and sufferings of a purifying and restoring char- 
acter, were essentials in the Parsi faith. The duration 
of suffering is fixed arbitrarily by Orma^d and by the 
necessities of the case, in the demerits and wants of 
the individual. But as to the length of time, it is 
stated with an affluent, Oriental indefiniteness. It is 
run off into symbolic days and nights, with poetic 
license, and herein corresponds to the thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of years that papal indulgences 
cover. In some cases the pangs of a day and a night 
are made equal to the agonies of three thousand years. 

The good, as the bad, are represented as making 
progress by stages of space or time, or both. 

"When a pure man dies, where does his soul 

c Spiegel's Khordah-Avesta, vol. XIV. v. 6. 
t Ibid., Vendidad-Fargard, vol. XIX. v. 122. 
t Spiegel's Note to Vendidad-Fargard, vol. XIX. v. 122. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 165 

dwell during this night? Then answered Ahura- 
Mazda: Near his head it sets itself down, reciting the 
GatM Ustavaiti, praying happiness for itself. On 
this night the soul sees as much joy fulness as the 
whole living world possesses." So during three 
nights the soul goes through the same experiences. 
"The soul of the pure man goes the first step and 
arrives in Humata; the soul of the pure man takes 
the second step and arrives at Hukhta; it goes the 
third step and arrives at Havarsta; the soul of the 
pure man takes the fourth step, and arrives at the 
Eternal Lights." Then that soul passes into the 
fourth and final Paradise. ( ' When a wicked one dies 
where does the soul dwell throughout this night? 
Then answered Ahura-Mazda: There, O pure Zara- 
thustra, near the head it runs about, while it utters 
the prayer Ke-Manm. ... In this night the soul 
sees as much unjoyfulness as the whole living world." 
The guilty one, as the innocent, has the three nights 
or stages. u The fourth step takes the soul of the 
wicked man and arrives at the darkness without be- 
ginning. . . . Bring hither food, poison and mixed 
with poison, for that is the food for a youth who 
thinks, speaks, and does evil — belongs to the wicked 
land after his death. ' ' * 

In tracing this P&rsi doctrine only so far, we dis- 
cover strong resemblances or prototypes of the corre- 
sponding papal one ; but a more marked likeness 

* Spiegel's Avesta, Bleek's Translation; Khordah-Avesta, vol. 
XXXVIII. 



166 PURGATORY. 

appears in the Zoroastrian theory and practice of 
prayers for the dead. Says Rawlinson, l ' The prayers 
of his friends in this world were of much avail to the 
deceased, and greatly helped him on his journey."* 

"■The duration of the punishment is fixed by Or- 
ma^d, and some are redeemed earlier by means of the 
prayers and intercessions of their friends, but many 
must remain till the resurrection of the dead. n f 

For the systematic ministration of such relief by 
living saints "there was a yearly solemnity, called 
The Festival for the Dead, still observed by the Par- 
sees, held at the season when it was thought that that 
portion of the sinful departed who had ended their 
penance were raised from Dutsakh to earth, from earth 
to Garotman. Du Perron says that this took place 
only during the last five days of the year, when the 
souls of all the deceased sinners who were undergoing 
punishment had permission to leave their confinement 
and visit their relatives; after which, those not yet 
purified were to return, but those for whom a sufficient 
atonement had been made were to proceed to Para- 
dise. "J 

In this Festival for the Dead we find an outline 
and the substantial elements of the All Souls' Day of 
the Romanist. The similarity of condition of the 
souls to be relieved, the theory of relief, and the meth- 
ods of aid, have a remarkable agreement. All Souls' 

* Ancient Monarchies, vol. III. p. 116. 

t Ten Great Religions, by James Freeman Clarke, p. 200. 

\ The Doctrine of a Future Life, by W. R. Alger, p. 137. 



THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 167 

Day " is a day instituted by the church in memory of 
all the faithful departed, that by the prayers and suf- 
frages of the living they may be freed out of their 
purgatory pains and come to everlasting rest. ' ' * 

In this Zoroastrian purgatory we find gross phys- 
ical qualities, as foul and loathsome places, cold, 
heat, and other intense bodily pains, fiendish tor- 
menting companions, cycles of time in purifying suf- 
fering, and slow stages of growth in purity to a full 
redemption, towards which the prayers and offerings 
of the living do much hasten the guilty and agonized 
ones. In perusing this scheme of the ancient Per- 
sians, the thoughtful reader will find it quite impossi- 
ble to suppress suggestions and comparisons concern- 
ing the later and more detailed scheme of the modern 
Romanists for the same purpose. This is the Zoroas- 
trian, Parsi, or Avestan religion in the department of 
the future life. 

We shall not give full credit to the system of Zoro- 
aster as a power to modify the coming Christian faith 
unless we regard its wide geographical sweep. Persia 
proper, that gave the name of Parsi to the system, 
was not a large country, being less than five hundred 
miles in length and two hundred or so in width. 
But the doctrines of Zoroaster travelled with the Per- 
sian kings to the limits of their wide domain, an ex- 
tent of country little less than three thousand miles 
from east to west, with a width varying from five hun- 
dred to fifteen hundred miles. It went up the valley 

* Douay Catechism. 



168 PURGATORY. 

of the Indus from its mouth to the northern and east- 
ern boundaries of Turkestan; thence westward by the 
Caspian and Black Seas to Constantinople; thence 
following the shores of the Mediterranean and sweep- 
ing up the valley of the Nile, it took in Egypt and 
then Arabia, and so returned by the Persian Gulf to 
the starting point. These were the limits of the Per- 
sian Empire at the height of its glory, from about 
B. C. 506 to B. C. 479. Speaking generally, its 
grandeur covered the times of E^ra, Nehemiah, Hag- 
gai, and Zechariah. Under Cyrus, Cambyses, Smer- 
dis the Impostor, Darius, and Xerxes, the religious 
system of Zoroaster was carried beyond the narrow 
bounds of old Persia to the imperial limits that we 
have indicated — an area larger than the Roman 
Empire in its greatest extent by four hundred thou- 
sand square miles. 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 169 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE GREEK PURGATORY. 

The Christian Church of the first centuries was 
trained much in the Grecian school. This will not 
seem strange to one who considers the wonderful lan- 
guage and varied literature and masterly authors in 
that school. It led the thinking world, and gave 
many leading fathers to the church. These, first edu- 
cated in their own Grecian theology, naturally carried 
many of their views with them into their new theol- 
ogy. But of such results we shall give more full no- 
tice by-and-by. Now we propose to notice the theory, 
teachings, and literature of the Greeks concerning pur- 
gatory. 

In showing the prevalence of the purgatorial sys- 
tem in the various sects and shades of the Grecian 
schools of philosophy, a reference here and there will 
be sufficient. These references, however, can be prop- 
erly introduced only by certain poetic photographs of 
that middle kingdom, taken by Homer centuries be- 
fore Greece could boast of a philosopher. * 

When Ulysses had gained his prayer to leave the 
hated island of Circe for Ithaca, his home, the en- 
chanting goddess said to him, 

* The quotations from Homer are from Bryant's Translation. 



17° PURGATORY. 

" But ye have yet to make 
Another voyage, and must visit first 
The abode of Pluto, and of Proserpine, 
His dreaded queen, and there consult the soul 
Of the blind seer, Tiresias." 
"There into Acheron are poured the streams 
Of Pyriphlegethon, and of that arm 
Of Styx, Cocytus. 

" Offer there thy prayer 
Fervently to that troop of airy forms, 
And make the vow that thou wilt sacrifice 
When thou at last shalt come to Ithaca." 

Ulysses and his company departed with sorrow and 
forebodings on their voyage and visit to the under 
world. They at length arrive at a land and people of 

"Eternal cloud 
And darkness. Never does the glorious sun 
Look on them with his rays when he goes up 
Into the starry sky, nor when again 
He sinks from heaven to earth. Unwholesome night 
O'erhangs the wretched race." 

When they had landed, Ulysses offered the sacri- 
fices prescribed by Circe. 

" When I had worshipped thus with prayer and vows 
The nations of the dead, I took the sheep 
And pierced their throats above the hollow trench. 
The blood flowed dark ; and thronging round me came 
Souls of the dead from Erebus — young wives, 
And maids unwedded, men worn out with years 
And toil, and virgins of a tender age 
In their new grief, and many a warrior slain 
In battle, mangled by the spear, and clad 
In bloody armor, who about the trench 
Flitted on every side, now here, now there, 
With gibbering cries, and I grew pale with fear." 

Homer was the first photographer who traversed 
that horrid region and took pictures from the grim 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 171 

walls of its Tartarian caverns, or caught originals from 
the living as the shadowy ones glided about over the 
plains of asphodel. 

Let us open this Homeric portfolio of pictures from 
the original purgatory, glancing at single faces or 
groups of figures as they happen to come to us. 

When Ulysses left the Isle of Circe, in the hurry 
of the early morning, one of his friends, heavy with 
wine and half awake, fell headlong from the flat roof 
of the palace and broke his neck, and so was lost from 
the company when they embarked. Surprised to meet 
him there in the realm of Pluto, Ulysses said, 

" How earnest thou, 
Elpenor, hither into these abodes 
Of night and darkness ? Thou hast made more speed, 
Although on foot, than I in my good ship. 
I spake ; the phantom sobbed, and answered me, 

1 Son of Laertes, nobly born and wise 

Ulysses, 't was the evil doom decreed 

By some divinity, and too much wine, 

That wrought my death.' " 

The type of purgatory, and specially the cause of 
entrance here brought out, are not exclusively pagan 
or papal. 

"And then the soul of Anticleia came— 
My own dead mother, daughter of the King 
Autolycus, large-minded. Her I left 
Alive what time I sailed for Troy, and now 
I wept to see her there, and pitied her. 

She knew me suddenly, 

And said in piteous tones these winged words: 
'How didst thou come, my child, a living man, 
Into this place of darkness ? Difficult 
It is for those who breathe the breath of life 

Purgatory. J^ 



172 PURGATORY. 

To visit these abodes, through which are rolled 

Great rivers, fearful floods.' 

. . . . I longed to take into my arms 
The soul of my dead mother. Thrice I tried, 
Moved by a strong desire, and thrice the form 
Passed through them, like a shadow or a dream." 

We give samples from the portfolio in variety, so 
that the impression may be average of that strange 
abode. 

" Then saw I Leda, wife of Tyndarus, 
Who bore to Tyndarus two noble sons — 
Castor, the horseman ; Pollux, skilled to wield 
The cestus. Both of them have still a place 
Upon the fruitful earth ; for Jupiter 
Gave them such honor that they live by turns 
Each one a day, and then are with the dead 

Each one by turns 

And Maera I beheld, and Clymene 
And Eriphyle, hateful in her guilt, 
Who sold her husband for a price in gold." 

But the catalogue of Ulysses, culled from the cen- 
sus-tables of Pluto's kingdom, is a long one, and he 
wearies, as the hours go by, in his minstrel story. 

"But vainly might I think to name them all — 
The wives and daughters of heroic men 
Whom I beheld — for first the ambrosial night 
Would wear away." 

His audience, however, will not be denied. 

"Now say, and frankly, didst thou also see 
Any of those heroic men who went 
With thee to Troy, and in that region met 
Their fate ? A night immeasurably long 
Is yet before us. Let us have thy tale 
Of wonders. I could listen till the break 
Of hallowed morning, if thou canst endure 
So long to speak of hardships thou hast borne." 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 173 

Thus encouraged and urged, Ulysses continues his 
personal narrative of the tour of purgatory. It would 
seem that souls of women had crowded most about 
him, as curious and importunate. Now the scene 
changes. 

11 When chaste Proserpina had made the ghosts 
Of women scatter right and left, there came 
The soul of Agamemnon, Atreus' son. 

He knew me at a look, 

And wailed aloud, and, bursting into tears, 
Stretched out his hands to touch me ; but no power 
Was there of grasp or pressure, such as once 
Dwelt in those active limbs. I could not help 
But weep at sight of him." 

Agamemnon had been slain at a banquet, by the 
treachery of his wife Clytemnestra; and when Ulysses 
asks for the cause of his death, he states the fact most 
practically. The Roman purgatory is famed for its 
good preaching by some of its sad inmates ; but for 
force and beauty few of them exceed the old Greek 
warrior in this : 

" I heard Cassandra's piteous cry, 
The cry of Priam's daughter, stricken down 
By treacherous Clytemnestra at my side. 
And there I lay, and, dying, raised my hands 
To grasp my sword. The shameless woman went 
Her way, nor stayed to close my eyes, nor press 
My mouth into its place, although my soul 
Was on its way to Hades. There is naught 
That lives more horrible, more lost to shame, 
Than is the woman who has brought her mind 
To compass deeds like these — the wretch who plans 
So foul a crime — the murder of the man 
Whom she a virgin wedded. . . . 



174 PURGATORY, 

Therefore be not compliant to thy wife, 
Nor let her hear from thee whatever lies 
Within thy knowledge. Tell her but a part, 
And keep the rest concealed." 

The ghost of Achilles is met by our under- world 
wanderer, and Ulysses congratulates him upon the fact 
that he is ruler over those vast regions of the dead. 
But this sad reply is made from his phantom lips : 

" I would be 
A laborer on earth, and serve for hire 
Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, 
Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down 
To death." 

Ambition has no ends to gain in that dark land ; 
the business rather is to make amends for sins and 
errors here, and so pass on to a better estate. Yet the 
great warrior is comforted with what is told him of the 
prowess and victories and wide fame of his son. 

"The soul of swift Eacides 
Over the meadows thick with asphodel 
Departed with long strides, well pleased to hear 
From me the story of his son's renown." 

It was an unfortunate interview when Ulysses and 
Ajax met ; for they had not come together face to face 
since their mighty struggle for the arms of the dead 
Achilles. In that contest Ajax was defeated, and in 
the delirium of his disappointment he slew the sheep 
about the camp, supposing they were the partisans of 
his successful rival. When recovered from the frenzy 
he saw his mistake, his mortification was intolerable, 
and he ended it with his life in suicide, and so has- 
tened to Hades. But his anger died not in the grave. 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 175 

The old pagan theology was orthodox in that a man 
takes his character with him to the nether world. 

" The other ghosts of those who lay in death 
Stood sorrowing by, and each one told his griefs ; 
But that of Ajax, son of Telemon, 

Kept far aloof, displeased 

. . . • Then I spake in soothing words, 

'O king, draw near, 

And hear our voice and words, and check, I pray, 
The anger rising in thy generous breast.' 

I spake ; he answered not, but moved away 
To Erebus, among the other souls 
Of the departed." 

Some cases of terrible retribution are sketched, as 
when a master, with a few lines, puts on the canvas a 
face that speaks. 

" And Tityus there I saw — the mighty earth 
His mother — overspreading, as he lay, 
Nine acres, with two vultures at his side, 
That, plucking at his liver, plunged their beaks 
Into his flesh ; nor did his hands avail 
To drive them off, for he had offered force 
To Jove's proud wife, Latona 



And next I looked on Tantalus, a prey 
To grievous torments, standing in a lake 
That reached his chin. Though painfully athirst, 
He could not drink ; as often as he bowed 
His aged head to take into his lips 
The water, it was drawn away, and sank 
Into the earth, and the dark soil appeared 
Around his feet ; a god had dried it up. 
And lofty trees drooped o'er him, hung with fruit — 
Pears and pomegranates, apples fair to sight, 
And luscious figs, and olives green of hue. 
And when that ancient man put forth his hands 
To pluck them from their stems, the wind arose 
And whirled them far among the shadowy clouds. 

16* 



176 PURGATORY. 

Then I beheld the shade of Sisyphus 
Amid his sufferings. With both hands he rolled 
A huge stone up a hill. To force ir up, 
He leaned against the mass with hands and feet ; 
But, ere it crossed the summit of the hill, 
A power was felt that sent it rolling back, 
And downward plunged the unmanageable rock 
Before him to the plain. Again he toiled 
To heave it upward, while the sweat in streams 
Ran down his limbs, and dust begrimed his brow." 

It is not needful to follow our Ulysses farther— the 
Gregory the Great of the Greeks— through these dark 
and doleful and ghostly regions. We have seen 
enough to recognize the original purgatory, though it 
be as simple and bald and barren compared with that 
of the papist, as is Faust's printing press when com- 
pared with Hoe's. Let us leave the region with 
Ulysses for the upper air. 

" Now there flocked 
Already round me, with a mighty noise, 
The innumerable nations of the dead; 

And I grew pale with fear 

..... Hastening to my ship, I bade 

The crew embark, and cast the hawsers loose." 

And so the first tour of Purgatory, whose record is 
extant, was made and ended. 

The doctrines and teachings of Pythagoras, on the 
theory of preexistence and purgatory, had their influ- 
ence, direct and indirect, on all the religious and 
philosophical systems immediately surrounding Chris- 
tianity at its introduction. His long residence in 
Egypt made him familiar with the theories of that 
primitive land concerning an anterior existence. 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 177 

That he afterwards spent some years among the Magi 
admits of doubts, though Prideaux is very confident: 
"That Pythagoras was in Egypt, and from thence 
went to Babylon, and learnt there a great part of that 
knowledge which he was afterwards so famous for, is 
agreed by all."* 

With a mixture of Egyptian, Indian, and Zoroas- 
trian philosophy, he brought back to Greece, as its 
leading teacher there, the theory of preexistence, and 
an eternal transmigration of the soul from body to 
body. He even declared that he retained a clear 
remembrance of that former state through which his 
soul had come into the present one. His system was 
pioneer to the Stoic and Platonic, though Plato carried 
it out more into details, and shows its power in the 
Christianity of the new Platonists and Schoolmen, f 

Plato in his Phsedrus says that if a soul in the 
society of the gods delights itself in nectar and ambrosia 
more than in the contemplation of truth, it grows 
sluggish and heavy, and falls to the earth, and takes 
to itself an earthly body, more or less gross, according 
to its previous grade. In his Politicus he advances 
the idea that after ten thousand years of degradation 
in the body, then souls will be restored to their primi- 
tive state among the celestials. He also quotes, in 
Cratylus, the saying of Orpheus, that "the human 
soul is here in punishment for sins committed in a 
preexistent state." The body is a prison where the 

* Connexion, sub anno, 486. 

t Morell, His. Philos. Introd., p. 28. 



178 PURGATORY. 

soul is kept in custody till it has suffered sufficiently 
for its faults. 

Empedocles, the Pythagorean, also held, like his 
Samian master, that souls are here in wandering and 
exile from God, because they sinned in heaven and 
were cast out to occupy mortal bodies. And Plutarch 
in his Isis and Osiris, makes Heraclitus say, ( ( My 
soul anticipates her departure from this prison, and 
beholding, as it were, an outside world through the 
windows of the body, it seems to recall that region 
from whence it came down to be enclosed in this 
mortal body of flesh and bones and blood and nerves. ' ' 

Plato also, in his Phaedo, speaking of that home of 
unfallen souls, says they there breathed light as we do 
air, and drank a water purer than air. Being now 
fallen, he says in his Phsedrus, those least debased and 
sinful are found in the bodies of philosophers, but the 
more thoroughly apostate in the bodies of despots and 
very degraded men. 

In his Phaedo Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates 
a description of the world of purgation, sufficiently 
like to be the original of that of the papist. Indeed 
it will be seen, after reading our summary from Plato, 
that some of the Roman-catholic authors whom we 
have quoted are well nigh open to the charge of 
plagiarism of language as well as ideas. 

The interior of the earth, he says, is full of caverns, 
communicating with each other by underground pas- 
sages. Among these are hot and cold springs and 
great rivers. Some of these rivers are of water and 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 179 

some of fire; some are pure and others dirty and 
muddy. These all have their confluence into Tar- 
tarus, and then flow out of it again in their own 
channels. 

Their influx and efflux is as respiration in the 
living creature. Among them three are conspicuous. 
One of these is Acheron, which, flowing under ground 
for a long distance, enters, at length, the Acherusian 
Marsh. Here vast multitudes of departed souls are 
congregated, and having been detained a longer or 
shorter time, according to their deserts and sentences, 
they depart to live an earthly life over again in the 
race of animals. 

Another of these rivers is the Phlegethon, or the 
Burning River. It is a river of many branches, that 
burst through in different places, wherever they can 
find or force a way. Its main stream flows into a fiery 
lake that boils constantly with water and mud; thence, 
by long compass under ground, it empties itself into 
the deepest parts of Tartarus. The third river is the 
Cocytus, the River of Sorrow. This in its course makes 
first the Stygian lake, the dismal abode of hate and 
fear and grief. After many additions, in its long and 
circling wanderings under ground, it also empties 
itself into Tartarus. 

This being the arrangement of the middle regions 
for the departed, Plato goes on to say, that when 
spirits arrive, they are first examined, and then sen- 
tenced. Those who have lived a life of tolerable 
uprightness go to the Acherusian Marsh, where they 



180 PURGATORY. 

remain long enough to suffer the punishments ap- 
pointed for their expiation and expurgation. After 
their sins are expiated they are absolved and released 
for happier regions. . 

If any in sudden passion have done violence to 
father or mother, or have taken human life in exces- 
sive anger, or have committed any other great yet 
expiable or c ' venial ' ' sins, and then truly repented 
during the rest of their lives, they are sent down into 
the lower abodes of Tartarus. When they have been 
in its circling and tormenting waters and fires for a 
twelvemonth, they are thrown into the Acherusian 
Marsh, where in the mixed assemblage of souls they 
find those whom they have injured. These they 
entreat to be content with the sufferings they have 
endured, and permit them to leave the dismal and 
sorrowful place. If the prayer is granted, they escape 
their miseries at once. Otherwise they take the 
circuit and sufferings of Tartarus again, and again try 
the clemency of those whom they wronged. And so 
on and on, and with some for painfully long cycles, 
till indulgence and absolution are perfected, when 
they take joyful and returnless departure. 

If, however, any are found burdened with very 
great sins, as unjust homicide or sacrilege, and have 
exercised no repentance, their sins are unpardonable 
or u mortal," and under stern decision they are thrust 
down into the lowest, deepest Tartarus, never to 
come up and out again. 

To this account of the purgatory of the Greeks, 



THE GREEK SYSTEM. 181 

Plato adds, " It is not for a wise man to declare that 
the description I here furnish of the region and condi- 
tions of souls after death is true. But it must be be- 
lieved that something like this is true concerning 
them." 

In another connection, though in the Phaedo, he 
says that souls going to the regions of the dead carry 
nothing with them but the education, manners and 
character of this life, and that these predetermine the 
the state there. If the soul be impure from the 
vices and crimes loved here, good souls will flee from 
it, and leave it lonely and unguided. So it is necessa- 
rily abandoned to wanderings and sorrows that will 
both punish and purify it. At its appointed time, 
when its purgation is completed, it escapes. 

In his Republic Plato unfolds the same theory of 
purgatory in his story of Eras, a Pamphylian. He 
was slain in battle, and when about to be buried, on 
the twelfth day he revived and gave an account of 
a wonderful tour that he had made through the 
lower regions. He witnessed the judgment day of 
the gods, and the division of the multitude of souls 
as they came in at death. The good were admitted 
at once to the abodes of the blessed, while the bad 
were sent downward, doomed to the long and sorrow- 
ful wandering of a thousand years. Then there was 
a regathering of the two divisions, the whole assembly 
were instructed and exhorted, and each soul was left 
to its own choice of its future life and state. * 
* Plato's Republic, Book X. 



182 PURGATORY. 

We have here, from the Grecian system of escha- 
tology, all the elements of the papal purgatory, if we 
except certain amplified details. Here is the middle 
region in the earth; the tormenting fire and water; 
here the multitude of souls, recently from the regions 
of the living, awaiting their primitive and purgating 
cycle of suffering; their times are limited by their 
deserts and by the facility with which pardons may 
be earned and obtained; here are constant indulgen- 
ces, absolutions, and departures for the happy land; 
here are sins l ' venial ' ' and ( ' mortal ' ' and the hell of 
the hopeless; and here, in the Pamphylian, the system 
of tours to and from that doleful region. We need 
only the thousand years between Plato and Gregory 
the Great, to perfect, from pagan mythology, the grand 
papal system of purgatory. It can all be accomplished 
without aid from the Apocrypha, or the distortion of 
the canonical Scriptures. The Grecian material is 
so abundant and apt, and the pagan structure so 
complete, that originality of thought and plan must 
be denied to Gregory for the huge imposition. 



THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 183 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE ROMAN PURGATORY. 

WE shall naturally look for the antitype of the 
Romanist's purgatory in the theology and mythology 
and under- world of the pagan Romans. Christianity 
but slowly at first, and only in part finally, supplanted 
paganism at Rome and in the empire of the Latins. 

Singularly and dangerously the apocryphal chair 
of St. Peter was placed in the beginning at the very 
gateway of a half-obsolete purgatory, and the jingling 
of his keys was a sound not unfamiliar on those old 
hills of the Csesars. Christianity found that under- 
world as one discovers an old mine with its shafts and 
tunnels and chambers and crumbling machinery, and 
skeletons now and then. 

With a church through whose membership there 
were largely infused pagans Christianized and Chris- 
tians paganized, how natural and easy to revive and 
adopt the classic theory of the spirit land, and renew 
the machinery and working of the inherited mine in 
those caverns of retribution. Moreover there was at 
the same time and place, as the popular poem of the 
age, the iEneid of Virgil, the traveller's guide to 
these lower regions, the hand-book of judgment for 
the world to come. 

As we open this volume here and there, for our 

Purgatory. " I "J 



i8 4 PURGATORY. 

historical purpose, the reader will note that the pur- 
gatory of the Romans has not been more enlarged and 
improved and perfected under nominally Christian 
hands, than their arts or sciences or agriculture. In- 
deed the purgatory of Virgil has changed less than 
his plough under the hand of his improving suc- 
cessors. 

iEneas asks permission of the Sibyl to visit his 
father Anchises in the spirit land. 

" One thing I ask of thee. Since here 't is said 
The gateway opens to the lower world, 
And that dim, shadowy lake, the o'erflowing tide 
Of Acheron, that I may, face to face, 
Meet my dear father." 

The Sibyl marvels that he should desire to float 
twice over the Stygian lake, and twice see the gloomy 
realms of Tartarus, once now alive, and hereafter 
again when dead. But she grants the request, with 
the solemn lesson of all religions and ages: 

"Easy the way 
Down the Avernus; night and the gates 
Of Dis stand open. But to retrace thy steps 
And reach the upper air, here lies the task, 
The difficulty here." 

With rites and sacrifices duly observed, ^neas, 
under the guide of the Sibyl, seeks the descent to 
Hades. 

" Through shadows, through the lonely night they went, 
Through the blank halls and empty realms of Dis. 

Suffering and Death 

Inhabit here, and Death's own brother, Sleep; 
And the mind's evil Lusts, and deadly War, 



THE R OMAN S YSTEM. 185 

Lie at the threshold, and the iron beds 
Of the Eumenides ; and Discord wild, 
Her viper-locks with bloody fillets bound. 

Hence downward leads the way to Tartarus 
And Acheron." 

By-and-by they come to Cocytus, the horrid 
stream, and to the Stygian lake, over which Charon, 
the squalid and grim boatman, is to ferry them and 
all the dead. Here a strange sight meets our hero. 

" Down to the banks 
Comes rushing the whole crowd, matrons and men. 
Great heroes, boys, unwedded girls, and youths, 
Their parents saw stretched on their funeral pile." 

Only a part of them the stern ferryman will admit 
to his boat, because they have not had burial rites. 

"No one may pass 
Those dreadful waves, until his bones repose 
Within a quiet grave. A hundred years 
They wander, flitting all around these shores, 
Until at last they cross the wished-for lake." 

It is with much difficulty that iEneas, because a 
living man, can be passed over. But the Sibyl is 
with him, and he bears a golden bough as a charm, 
and Charon consents and sets them across the lake, 
and on the confines of the spirit land proper. 

"Then, as they entered, voices wild were heard, 
Shrieking and wailing — souls of infants robbed 
Of all their share of life, snatched from the breast, 
And sunk by cruel fate in gloomy death. 
Then next were those by accusations false 

Condemned to suffer death 

Next come 

The places where the sad and guiltless souls 
Were seen, who, hating the warm light of day, 
Wrought their own death, and threw away their lives. 



i86 PURGATORY. 

How willingly they now, in the upper air, 
Their poverty and sufferings would endure ! 

Here those whom tyrannous love with cruel blight 
Has wasted, in secluded paths are hid, 
And sheltered round about by myrtle groves, 
Not even in death their cares are left behind." 

And so ^Ejneas wanders about in those ghostly- 
realms, meeting now the injured Dido, who justly 
refuses to speak to him, { ' with defiance in her mien, ' ' 
and now meeting old and famous Grecian warriors 
and others. 

" To right and left 
The spirits crowd about him, not content 
Merely to see him, but they needs must wait 
And hover round his steps, and know what cause 
Has brought him hither. But the Grecian chiefs 
And hosts of Agamemnon, when they see 
The hero and his glittering arms that flash 
Across the shadows, tremble with great fear. 
Some turn and fly, as to their ships of old 
They fled ; some raise their voices, and their shouts 
Die without sound within their gasping throats." 

Farther on our two travellers come to the inner 
Tartarus, but do not enter, though the Sibyl ex- 
plains it. 

" Groans from within were heard ; the cruel lash, 
The clank of iron, and of dragging chains. 



Here those who cherished hatred during life 

Towards their brothers, or who lifted hands 

Of violence against their parents ; those 

Who 'gainst their clients schemed and practised fraud; 

Or those who brooded o'er their hoarded wealth, 

Selfish and solitary, nor dispensed 

A portion to their kin — the largest crowd 



THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 187 

These formed; or those who for adulterous crimes 

Were slain 

Here one is seen, who for a golden bribe 
His country sold, and fixed a despot's throne; 
And for a price made laws, and then unmade. 

All had dared 

Some dreadful crime, succeeding where they dared. 
Nor if I had a hundred tongues, a voice 
Of iron, could I tell thee all the forms 
Of guilt, or number all their penalties." 

Leaving this region of punishment and agony and 
despair on their left, they turn to the Elysian plains, 

"The pleasant realms 
Of verdant green, the blessed groves of peace. 

Here the bands are seen 

Of those who for their country fought and bled ; 
The chaste and holy priests ; the reverent bards 
Whose words were worthy of Apollo; those 
Who enriched life with fine inventive arts; 
And all who by deserving deeds had made 
Their names remembered." 

iBneas is now in the department of his venerated 
father, Anchises, to meet whom he has taken this 
long and perilous under- world tour. On inquiry for 
him, they are led to a hilltop whence there is a broad 
outlook over the shining fields of the blessed. 

" Anchises there, 
Down in a valley green, was noting all 
The souls shut in, destined one day to pass 

Into the upper light. 

He, when he saw ^Lneas, o'er the grass 
Coming to meet him, stretched his eager hands, 
His cheeks bedewed with tears, and from his lips 
These accents fell, * And art thou come at last? 
That filial love I counted on so long, 
Has it now overcome the arduous road? 
My son, is 't granted me to see thy face, 

17* 



188 PURGATORY. 

And hear thy well-known voice, and answer thee ? 
Thus in my mind I hoped and guessed, indeed, 
And numbered o'er the intervening times, 
Nor have my anxious wishes been deceived.' " 

iEneas is greatly moved to see and hear his aged 
father, and responds, 

" * Grasp now my hand, my father, grasp my hand 
In thine ; withdraw not from thy son's embrace !' 

Thrice round his neck he strove to throw his arm 
And thrice the shadow flitted from his grasp, 
And vanished like a winged dream away." 

While ^Bneas and Anchises are conversing and 
strolling they come to the river L,ethe, and see an in- 
numerable number of souls about its banks. iEjneas 
inquires who they are and what their future may be, 
and is informed that they are destined for other bod- 
ies, are in a transition state, and by-and-by will ap- 
pear among mortals again. This is a great surprise to 
iEneas. 

" * O father, can we think that from this place 
Any exalted souls to upper skies 
Return to enter sluggish frames again ? 
Why so intensely do these hapless ones 
Long for the light ?' " 

These questions lead Anchises to explain the ori- 
gin of the soul and its entrance into bodies of differ- 
ent grades, human and animal. By these it is more 
or less tainted. 

"Nor e'en when life's last ray 
Has fled, does every ill depart, nor all 
Corporeal taints quite leave their unhappy frames, 
And needs must be that many a hardened fault 
Inheres in wondrous ways. Therefore the pains 
Of punishment they undergo for sins 



THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 189 

Of former times. Some in the winds are hung, 

Suspended and exposed. Others beneath 

A waste of waters from their guilt are cleansed, 

Or purified by fire. We all endure 

Our ghostly retribution. Thence a few 

Attain the free Elysium's happy fields, 

Till Time's great cycle of long years complete, 

Clears the fixed taint, and leaves the etherial sense 

Pure, a bright flame of unmixed heavenly air. 

All these, when for a thousand years the wheel 

Of fate has turned, the Deity calls forth 

To Lethe's stream, a mighty multitude ; 

That they, forgetful of the past, may see 

Once more the vaulted sky, and may begin 

To wish return into corporeal frames.' 



Anchises, having thus addressed his son, 
Together with the Sibyl, leads them on, 
And through the ivory gate dismisses them. 
Back to his ships the chief pursues his way; 
Again beholds his comrades ; then sets sail 
Towards Caieta's port. The anchors now 
Hang from the prows ; the sterns stand on the beach." 

How very like all this to the authors and purgato- 
rial itineraries of the tenth, fifteenth, and even nine- 
teenth centuries ! With a few changes from classic 
to saintly names, one could be easily pardoned the 
mistake in supposing he was reading a papal instead 
of pagan Roman poet. For there is more than paral- 
lelism and suggested likeness; there is approximate 
identity of idea and theory, and method and results. 
Further historical developments will show parental 
relations between the old pagan and the coming papal 
purgatory. 



igo PURGATORl. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE GNOSTIC PRESSURE ON THE CHURCH. 

In the growth of philosophical thought, which in 
ruder ages runs naturally and mostly on the spiritual 
or religious line, the Zoroastrian system, at the advent 
of Christianity and before, showed such decadence as 
always suggests death or renovation. As the two sys- 
tems of Zoroaster and of Christ, therefore, met on com- 
mon ground, there were naturally some mutual ten- 
dencies to affiliate, as also rivalries to supplant. Hence 
two schools or systems of philosophical religion arose, 
the Gnostic and the Manichaean, the former being the 
elder. As to times and places, it is sufficient for our 
purpose to say, generally, that Gnosticism flourished 
in all Christian communities in the second century, 
showed weakness in the third and prostration in the 
fourth, and disappeared, as a system or sect, in the 
sixth. The system itself was eclectic, and of three 
parts mainly : the old Parsism of Zoroaster, Platonic 
philosophy, and Jewish theology ; and the system had 
its sects as these elements were combined in different 
proportions, or as some minor one came in with a local 
prominence. It was more intellectual than spiritual, 
and more speculative than practical. 

The Parsi and the Greek systems have been given 



GNOSTIC INFL UENCE. 191 

in outline, and the Jewish may be here briefly stated, 
so far as our question of eschatology is concerned. 

The doctrine of preexistence was no tenet foreign 
to apocryphal Judaism when the pure form of that re- 
vealed religion was supplanted by the Christian. In 
the Book of Wisdom, Solomon is represented as say- 
ing, " I was a witty child, and had a good spirit; yea, 
rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled."* 
Here Solomon is made to teach that he received in 
this life a body of peculiar excellence, because in a 
preexistent state he had been peculiarly good.f 

The Essenes held this doctrine in very distinct out- 
line. Josephus says that according to this sect, souls 
come out of the most subtile air and of a celestial ori- 
gin, and enter mortal bodies as prison-houses. Some 
natural enticement attracts them to these bodies, where 
they remain for a time enforced, as in some loathsome 
dungeon. When released from this by death, they 
depart, as from a prison, to a life immortal, yet of a 
grade befitting their moral character. As to that fu- 
ture, Josephus says their opinion coincides with that 
of the Greeks, who send their brave and good at death 
to the islands of the blessed, while they allot to bad 
souls dark and tempestuous regions full of punish- 
ments. \ 

* Wisdom, VIII. pp. 19, 20. 

t The Douay and the Septuagint add clearness to the idea: "I was a 
witty child, and had received a good soul. And whereas I was more good, 
I came to a body undefiled." Uaic de rjfirjv evcpvyg, tpvxv? re ekaxov ayadris, 
Ma/2ov de ayadbg &v 7)A&ov eig ctipa a^iiavTov. 

% Josephus, De Bell. Jud., B. II. Ch. VIII. § 11. Neander, I. p. 47. 
Mosh. Com., I. p. 69. 



192 PURGATORY. 

In the book of Maccabees we are informed that 
after a battle in which many Jews were slain, Judas, 
making a collection, u sent twelve thousand drachms 
of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice, to be offered for the 
sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously of the 
resurrection ; for if he had not hoped that they that 
were slain would rise again, it would have seemed 
superfluous and vain to pray for the dead, and because 
he considered that they who had fallen asleep with 
godliness had great grace laid up for them. It is 
therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for 
the dead, that they may be loosed from sins."* 

The apocryphal character of this authority does not 
affect the strength of the quotation for our use, since 
it is conceded that the book of Maccabees was writ- 
ten not later than A. D. 70, and possibly as early as 
B. C. 124. The quotation is proof, therefore, that the 
theory of a purgatory, and the utility of prayers for the 
dead therein, were ideas prevalent with some of the 
Jews at that writing. 

It is, however, unfortunate for the papist that this 
passage is found in an apocryphal Scripture, since it 
is their usual proof-text for prayers for the dead, and 
the only one they cite that has pertinency or force. 

The Gnostic School had its sects, as these three, 
the Parsi, the Greek, and the Judaic, combined in dif- 
ferent proportions, or as some minor one came in with 
a local prominence. It was more intellectual than 
spiritual, and more speculative than practical, as the 

* 2 Mace. 2:43-46. Douay Trans. 



GNOSTIC INFL UENCE. 193 

name of its advocates shows — the Gnostics, the know- 
ing ones. Some of these Gnostics recognised a kind 
of authority in the Old Testament, and so affiliated 
with the Jews, and introduced Parsism and Platonism 
into the Jewish theological schools in Syria and at 
Alexandria. Others held the New Testament in great 
respect, and as eclectics had affinity for its intellectual 
and theoretic qualities, and so became Christians in a 
sense, and came within the church ; for many early 
Christian teachers were more jealous than discrimi- 
nating in their preaching, and garnered much unsifted 
wheat. The Christian doctrine was favorably met by 
a high intellectual interest on the part of the Gnostics, 
and in their ambition to gain truth they adopted the 
Christian scheme, but with an indifference to the spir- 
itual import and practical uses of it. And Neander 
says they ( c were not at all disposed to separate them- 
selves from the rest of the church and establish dis- 
tinct communities of their own. ' ' * Yet of their rela- 
tive force Guericke says "it is rare to find that the 
Gnostic club is superior in numbers and strength to 
the local church, "f 

Of Gnosticism, then, we note three things for those 
earlier centuries of Christianity: it was in the church; 
it embraced the intellectual and speculative and phil- 
osophical class in the church; and it was coextensive 
with it. The latter fact is significant, since, besides 
its European and African conquests, Christianity had, 

* Neander, Ch. Hist, I. p. 389. 

t Ancient Church, Shedd's Trans , p. 164. 



194 PURGATORY. 

by the middle of the second century, planted itself in 
Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria, and in the third 
century in Armenia. When we consider how much 
Gnosticism had borrowed from Zoroaster and Plato, 
and how mythological and pagan its eschatology was, 
we may presume that it was making a severe and dan- 
gerous pressure on the juvenile church and on a sim- 
ple, spiritual, and practical gospel. Gnosticism pre- 
tended to scholarship and philosophy and originality. 
Such pretentious claims in the pulpit have usually 
gained an unwise admiration, a barren church, and a 
deteriorated creed. It was painfully so in the present 
instance, as was illustrated in Rome herself. For in 
that germinant centre of the coming papacy the cen- 
tral force of Gnosticism carried sway by its scholarly 
bearing. "The Valentinians, the most influential 
and important division of the Gnostics, continued to 
exist, under various modifications of their system, till 
into the fourth century, and later; their principal seat 
being the city of Rome."* 

In this infusion of Gnosticism into Christianity 
there came, as essential parts of it, the notions of pre- 
existence and a future purgatorial state. For proof 
of this we will cite a few illustrative and influential 
cases from among the Gnostic Christian teachers. 

Basilides, who stood prominent in the church in 
the first half of the second century, had had previous 
culture in the Judsean and Egyptian schools. He 
taught that the soul, having sinned in a former life, 

* Guericke, Shedd's Translation, p. 171. 



GNOSTIC I NFL UENCE. 195 

was sent hither for punishment and purification. If 
it failed of a perfect recovery here, it was doomed at 
death to enter another body, human or brutal, for 
another experiment and struggle for restoration. This 
was his idea of " visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion." And on the same theory of serial existences 
he explained the words of St. Paul, "I was alive 
without the law once," in a former state of existence, 
before the law was given. Basilides had a deep and 
painful consciousness of this inherited corruption, and 
great humility under it, with a devout and intense 
longing for freedom from it. With this tone of piety, 
his teaching had all the more weight in carrying 
his errors into the young and uneducated church of 
Christ* 

Carpocrates was a Gnostic and Christian philoso- 
pher of Alexandria, and flourished in the first half of 
the second century. In his theology he was semi- 
pagan. On the doctrine of preexistence he drew 
largely from the Phsedrus of Plato. He taught that 
souls which properly remember their former and bet- 
ter state, with earnest struggles to regain it, will suc- 
ceed, though only by painful labors. Others, less 
active, will fail, and so fall back into second bodies 
for another trial. 

Valentine, another Gnostic, led large parties in 
the Eastern and Western Churches, about the middle 
of the second century. He held that souls had their 

* Mosheim's Commentary, I. pp. 416-427. Neander, I. pp. 404-417. 

Fur;-<itory. IS 



196 PURGATORY. 

beginning in the third heavens, where they were 
divine and pure. But under transgression they were 
driven out to take on themselves earthly bodies — the 
1 c coats of skins ' f that God gave to our sinning pa- 
rents. After a sufficient number of purifying changes 
and much redemptive suffering they will be restored 
to their celestial estate and abode. 

Justin Martyr, of Grecian and pagan parentage, in 
the first half of the second century had for teachers 
Stoic, Pythagorean, and Platonic, and came under the 
Great Teacher when about twenty-three years of age. 
He is the first scholar and doctor in the church who 
puts the Platonic theories into the gospel, and at the 
same time under its modifying power. He speaks of 
the soul as appearing more than once in human em- 
bodiment; and if, when about to depart in death, it is 
not fit for heaven, it assumes some animal form, and 
so passes onward and upward by a degrading and 
purifying process. 

Origen, who took the martyr's crown practically 
under his persecutions, though not really, A. D. 254, 
in the sixty-ninth year of his age, was the first scholar 
of his times, and had much power in shaping the the- 
ology of the church. * He believed and taught that 
human souls lived, sinned, and fell in a preexistent 
state, and were sent hither in punishment. Indeed, 
the world was created specially as their prison-house, 

* "The Adamantine Origen, the Living Personification of Oriental 
Learning, Eagerness, and Speculation." Prof. H. B. Smith, D. D. Ad- 
dress for the Promotion of Education. 1857. 



GNOSTIC INFLUENCE. 197 

and human bodies were created for them, that they 
might here go through a punitive and purifying dis- 
pensation. Modifying while adopting the ideas of 
his Egyptian and Platonic teachers, he taught that 
many material worlds had existed and perished, and 
that many others will yet come and go, as abodes for 
the punishment and restoration of revolted souls. 
When their redemption is complete, the last mate- 
rial world will be destroyed, as the stagings and scaf- 
foldings are all taken down when the building is com- 
plete. * 

In concluding this collection of historical rays of 
light on the Gnostic purgatory as the preface to the 
Roman, it may serve well our purpose to quote one 
scholar and author who stood openly on the pagan 
side of a rather obscure line. 

Hierocles, not the governor of Alexandria in the 
fourth century, who persecuted the Christians with 
pen and sword, but Hierocles, the new Platonist, who 
flourished at Alexandria in the fifth century, speaks 
quite definitely of the nature and design of the purga- 
torial sufferings in his Commentary on the Golden 
Verses of Pythagoras: " The judges of the infernal 
regions correct and cure the soul by prescribing pun- 
ishments for the health of nature, just as physicians 
heal the most inveterate ulcers by incisions. They 
punish the crime in order to extirpate it. They do 
not annihilate the essence of the soul, but bring it 

* Mosheim's Commentary, II. pp. 150-153; Neander, I. pp. 624-627 ; 
Biblica Sacra, XII. pp. 161-165. 



198 PURGATORY. 

back to its true existence by purifying it from all tlie 
passions that corrupt it. n * 

But it is not necessary to proceed farther in show- 
ing that the pagan theories of preexistence infected 
largely the prominent teachers of the church in the 
early centuries. The bold outburst of Jerome may be 
taken as a synopsis of many pages that could be here 
added: u This impious and wicked doctrine was an- 
ciently diffused through Egypt and the Bast, and now 
prevails in secret, as in vipers' nests, among most, and 
pollutes the purity of those regions; and as by an he- 
reditary disease, glides in the few to pervade the 
many." 

Of this doctrine, the doctrine of a second probation 
would be an inevitable if not logical sequence, and, as 
a matter of fact, it did come in as actual and practical. 

Gregory the Great, sometimes called the first pope, 
born about A. D. 544, and dying A. D. 604, organ- 
ised and matured the purgatorial system that we have 
under consideration. How near to his day and chair 
the philosophic and mystic elements of the Oriental 
purgatory may have been brought by these Gnostic 
scholars is now obvious. Those were not our hasty, tele- 
graphic days, when a new German theory is obsoles- 
cent in ten years and fossil antique in twenty-five. 
For practical effect, systems two centuries apart were 
well nigh as contemporaneous then as those of two 
decades are to-day. 

* The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. By 
the Chevalier Ramsay. Vol. II. p. 363. Glasgow, 1749. 



THE MANICH^EAN SYSTEM. 199 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE MANICHAEAN PRESSURE OK THE CHURCH. 

As Gnosticism was disappearing, a new, more 
scholarly, insinuating, and dangerous enemy to Chris- 
tianity came slowly to view in Manichaeism. It 
differed from the former mainly in seeming to come 
nearer to Christianity, and in simulating it by adopt- 
ing, in symbol, its theories and aims and terms. 
Mani himself, of Persian origin, was a Parsi and a 
Christian, but which first is not agreed. He was a 
pervert from one, but not a total convert to the other, 
and his system was therefore a hybrid. Neander calls 
it "the Buddhaist-Zoroastrian-Christian system;" 
' ' a strange compound, ' ' says Mosheim, ( ' of the ancient 
Persian philosophy and Christianity." The Mani- 
chseans ( ' transmute Christianity into a Persian phi- 
losophy and theosophy. Of all the Christian heretical 
sects, the Manichseans certainly are least deserving of 
the epithet Christian; for Manichaeism is at bottom a 
purely heathen scheme, invested in a symbolical 
drapery borrowed from Christianity. Yet there is 
sufficient of this drapery to justify its being treated as 
a sect having connections with Christianity, and run- 
ning parallel with Gnosticism."* 

Of the Bible they received as authority only parts of 

* Guericke, Shedd's Trans., p. 185. 
IS* 



200 PURGATORY. 

the New Testament. Yet they applied to these parts 
so destructive a criticism, to separate the genuine 
from the corrupt, and such an interpretation of it and 
enforced discovery of symbols, to make all correspond 
with the doctrines of Mani, that no Scripture was left, 
as divine and authoritative. They so used Christian 
titles and names and phrases as to give an appearance 
of a Christian sect. ' ' Agapius, a shrewd and crafty 
Manichaean, for the sake of concealment used the 
common words and phrases of Christians, but affixed 
to them meanings accordant with the opinions of his 
master."* This was a common practice with the 
learned disciples of Mani. One person, in their theol- 
ogy, they called Christ, and another the Holy Ghost; 
and they spoke of the advent and crucifixion of Christ, 
and of the salvation of men by him as the only Saviour. - 
They urged repentance, observed the Sabbath, and 
celebrated the sacrament of the Supper in their way. 
Mani opens his Epistola Fundamenti, their Bible in 
reality, with the words, " Mani, called to be an apostle 
of Jesus Christ, through the election of God the 
Father;" yet the later Manichseans taught that Mani, 
Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Sun, are one and 
the same person. 

It was in the latter half of the third century that 
Mani originated and introduced this system. The 
Magi were laboring to restore the waning school of 
Zoroaster, when Mani discovered that certain funda- 
mental elements in Christianity, as a redemptive 

* Mosheim's Commentary, II. p. 374. * 



THE MANICHsEAN SYSTEM. 201 

system, could be forced to combine, in appearance, 
with Parsism. He set himself, therefore, to infuse the 
young blood of the new religion into the enfeebled 
body of the old Parsi system. It was a bold attempt 
to work over the religions of old Asia, and the now 
wide-spreading Christianity, into a new spiritual phi- 
losophy and popular religious creed. In the combina- 
tion the teachings of Christ must be accommodated to 
those of Zoroaster. The aim was openly declared, 
and the end publicly contested, and so widely carried 
that at the close of the third century this sect had 
become prominent in the East, and in Northern Africa, 
and in Europe to the limits of the Roman Empire. 

It will be necessary to our purpose to outline this 
system only far enough to show its eschatology, and 
the relations of that part of it to our general topic. 

Mani held the theory of two kingdoms, good and 
evil, and that they are co-eternal, co-extensive, and 
co-potent. Iyight and darkness represent these powers 
or parties, as persons called God and the Demon. 
Far back in the ages the two parties mixed in struggle, 
spiritual and physical, and the demon so far succeeded 
that a third realm resulted. Itself was spiritual and 
material, composed of the mixed good and evil of the 
two parties. This third realm consisted of earthy 
matter, w T hich is of the demon and wholly evil, in this 
instance and universally, and of a portion of the celes- 
tial elements, and of the divine and animated light, 
the inorganic material of which rational souls could 
be made. In ftie struggle the demon and his leaders 



202 PURGATORY. 

had also absorbed or devoured a large number of celes- 
tial souls, and they became changed in their nature, 
and assimilated to the powers of darkness. 

The kingdom of light now moved another cam- 
paign on the kingdom of darkness to recover the 
souls and the particles of celestial light, held in bond- 
age in that third realm. To prevent the recapture 
the Demon secured as many births as would embody 
all those souls and utilise all those particles of light, 
and then devoured all this new progeny. Thus he 
absorbed into himself the spiritual treasures plundered 
from the celestial kingdom, and afterward procreated 
Adam, the first man, and conveyed to him the same. 
So those souls and particles of divine light, stolen and 
debased, were thought to be safe from recovery, as 
being forced into the soul of Adam, in whom the 
whole future race of mortals was now compacted. 
Then they were made ready for propagation by the 
generation of Eve, and so the suffering and sinful race 
of mortals began. The body of each is of depraved 
matter, wholly hostile to God. In each there are two 
souls, one rational, made of one of those celestial souls 
and particles of celestial light, and the other an 
offspring of the Demon and fully his child in character. 
After Adam was thus procreated by the Demon, and 
all these stolen souls and particles of celestial light had 
been consolidated into his one soul, it was the purpose 
of God to prevent the extension of the kingdom of 
darkness by compelling Adam to a bachelor life. 
The Demon, however, having an eye to his own future 



THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 



203 



and populous kingdom, generated Eve, and with only 
a base and evil soul, since her father had imparted all 
celestial souls and light to Adam. As Eve had only 
the baser soul of the Demon, passion ruled, and the 
human race began; and that was the fall of Adam. 
In the propagation of the race, body generates body, 
and soul generates soul. So each child of Adam is 
threefold, having a body wholly evil, one soul wholly 
evil, and one soul wholly good. The origin of the 
human race, therefore, is not of God, but of the 
Demon, and our heavenly part is stolen material from 
the kingdom of light. It then became the divine 
problem to recover, separate, purify and take back 
again what the Prince of darkness had captured. 

God therefore constructed the universe, the earth 
and the heavenly bodies surrounding as a domicile 
where he could handle the coming human race and 
work out their salvation. Of material perfectly pure 
he first made the sun and moon, of pure fire and light 
the sun, and of pure water the moon; and of what 
was slightly contaminated he next made the stars, 
and the ether in which they are set; and finally, of 
gross matter totally corrupted and depraved, he made 
the earth. This took place after the procreation of 
Adam and Eve by the Prince of darkness, but before 
the generation of their race. To keep the coming 
race as free as possible from Satanic interference, the 
princes of evil were confined in the stars, yet could 
throw maligin influences more or less on the earth. 
To them the Manichsean system attributes tempests, 



2o 4 PURGATORY. 

thunder storms, pestilences, droughts and other blights, 
and many personal and private evils. The Prince of 
darkness, in his rage, drops bile on the earth, whence 
come the grapevine and wine. These are born 
under an ( ' evil star, ' ' and so foredoomed. 

The Son of God and many celestial beings fixed 
their residence in the sun and moon. In making the 
world, masses of totally bad fire, water, air, and wind 
were walled out, to be let in when the time comes 
for the absolute destruction of our earth. This uni- 
verse was thought to be a most cumbrous affair and 
in danger of falling apart, and so was braced up by 
two giants. When they weary and tremble w T e have 
earthquakes, and at times God sends down his Son to 
strengthen them, and then it is that he "preaches 
to the spirits in prison. ' ' 

The world being thus prepared, as a stage for 
action, and the human race coming on it, God wrought 
variously for their recovery. He sent his Son, who 
feigned a body, and taught the Jews a way of escape, 
and confirmed his teachings by miracles. The Prince 
of evil feared the results, and moved the Jews to put 
him to death. Christ seemed to suffer and to be cruci- 
fied, and so by example taught that the escape of a soul 
is by sorrow and torture. Christ did not reveal fully 
the plan of salvation, but promised the Paraclete, who 
came in the person of Mani and completed the revela- 
tion. Of the causes of the advent of Christ and of his 
teachings, sufferings, and death, the Manichsean so 
spoke, and in such Scriptural and Christian phrases, 



THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 2 o 5 

that the uncritical would note little if any difference 
between them and Christians. The sufferings of 
Christ were not vicarious, but only exemplary. For 
these souls were perfect and could not sin, or need 
repentance or atonement. They were only unfortu- 
nate captives imprisoned in a vile body, and he taught 
them by example that to escape they must deny, 
macerate, and torture that body as he had done. 

The souls that received Christ as the Son of God 
and their Saviour, and struggled for obedience to him, 
forsaking the Prince and works of darkness, slowly 
made escape from their corruptions and thraldom. In 
this they were much aided by the Holy Spirit. Repen- 
tance was urged, meaning thereby sorrow for yielding 
to the low instincts of their second soul; for the 
divine soul could not sin, being simply a particle of 
the perfect God. 

^ No soul is perfectly pure, when at death it leaves 
this dark and corrupt body, and much painful purga- 
tion yet remains. When liberated by death from the 
body, souls are quite luminous, and pass by way of 
the twelve constellations to the moon. Their shining, 
radiant character it is that imparts the brightness 
and glow to the zodiac. Their first station is the 
moon. This is an ocean of pure water, and the abode 
of celestial spirits, and well adapted to wash away all 
external or tangible stains that may attach to them. 
For fifteen days they swim and bathe and are washed 
in these celestial waters. In so long time the moon 
becomes filled with well- washed ones, and then empties 



2o6 PURGATORY. 

them into the sun. So do souls, those particles of light, 
swell that ocean orb with brightness, and it becomes a 
full moon of souls. In the pale, lean emptiness of 
her first quarter she is commencing another monthly 
deportation of immortals in their weary and painful 
progress of purgation. The sun receives them 
from the moon. The sun is a divine mass of the 
purest fire, the abode of Christ and of many celes- 
tial beings. All stain, filth of soul, or moral taint of 
any kind, is intolerable and impossible here, and so 
the newly-arrived enter on the severest purification, 
as ore in the crucible. This continues without speci- 
fied or tabled time, but the end is perfection, as abso- 
lute as divinity, when the souls pass on to their native 
country, the world of ineffable and eternal light. 
First washed, and then roasted and burned into purity, 
their purgatory is ended. It is the more tolerable since 
Christ and the angelic have home in the moon and 
sun, and furnish blessed society and special aids to 
those in purification. As Christ assists them in all the 
sorrowful stages, he is their Saviour. The sufferings of 
this class are not punitive, for they are not sinners, but 
remedial for them as unfortunates. Pain comes on 
them as on patients in the hospital under surgery. 

In the spirit world Manichseism has three classes 
of souls: the perfect, whom we have now considered; 
the totally wicked; and a medium class. This medium 
class consists of those who may have known their duty 
but imperfectly, or attended to it carelessly, or who 
may have been negligent of the means of purification 



THE MANICH^ZAN SYSTEM. 207 

while in the body. A second probation is assigned to 
these by another worldly life in some animal, tree, 
plant, or herb; for this system of Mani fills all nature, 
animate and inanimate, with souls. This second life in 
a body is graded of God to the demerits of the person. 
In cases of the most worthy, souls are so embodied that 
the next death passes them on at once to the world of 
light by the moon and sun. There is, moreover, a 
poetic justice shown in the kind of punishment. If one 
killed a sacred animal, his next and purgatorial life 
w r ould be in that animal; the dying miser is passed over 
to become a tramp and a beggar; he of the lordly 
mansion would be as a poor tenant, changing his 
room monthly; the homicide would be doomed to a 
leprous body, and so on in endless variations and 
adaptations. The reader will readily recall the same 
theory and practice, as we have delineated it, under 
the papal system. The Manichaean and Papal pic- 
tures could not be much nearer alike, if electrotyped 
from the same original. Yet these purgatorial visi- 
tations of Mani in other bodies were paternal and sal- 
utary rather than judicial and punitive. 

The third class were those who sinned enormously, 
despised God, added malignity to the neglect of duty, 
and were totally negligent of their purification. These 
were assigned to the Manichaean hell. This is a place 
made up of masses of evil fire, remnants of the van- 
quished realm of darkness, where the Demon and his 
princes bear rule. Here they suffer all that fiend and 
fire can inflict ; yet while the tortures seem to come 

Purgatory. IQ 



2o8 PURGATORY. 

only from a Satanic joy in tormenting, the process is 
restorative, the corrupt is agonised out of them, and 
they finally follow those who, earlier and more de- 
vout, have passed into eternal light. 

The coincidence is so striking between the Papal 
and the Manichaean policy in one point, that we note 
it here in its separateness. Manichaeans who died 
without penitence or formal confession of their sins, 
were committed at once to this realm of anguish. The 
papist has the same doom for the same neglect, and 
from that doom confession and absolution saved equally 
the Manichaean and the Romanist. Of the Romanist 
dying unconfessed and unabsolved, it may be said, as 
it was said of the Manichaean who died impenitent, 
( ' Non punitur quia peccavit, sed quia de peccato non 
doluit" 

We have now, by condensed statement and author- 
itative quotations, shown the Manichaean system in 
the matter of the sinful dead, and of their purgation 
after death into a state of perfect blessedness. How 
far it served to foreshadow, preface, and found the fol- 
lowing purgatorial system of Romanism is a matter for 
just judgment from an historical and theological basis 
as now given. It remains only to add a few consider- 
ations that are indispensable to the formation of this 
just judgment. 

It was no purpose of the Gnostics to supplant or 
even reconstruct the Christian Church. They wished 
only to infuse Gnosticism into the church, and this not 
by new creeds or forms, but by new interpretations and 



THE MANICHjEAN SYSTEM. 209 

uses of the old, with such inner, second, and spiritual 
senses as only those of the higher spiritual life could 
receive. It was quite otherwise with.Mani. He de- 
clared himself as commissioned of God to reform radi- 
cally and quite extensively the church. Judaism he 
regarded as of the Demon, and, so far as it stood con- 
nected with Christianity, only a source of corruption. 
Hence the church was exceedingly degenerated ; and 
as he understood his divine mission, so he declared 
openly his purpose to modify and adjust Christianity 
to his system and found one true and mostly new 
church. On this plan, open and bold, he and his 
followers struck out into the fields that the religion of 
Christ had begun to occupy, and started their churches, 
with their bishops and presbyters and deacons. In 
Bulgaria and Slavonia they had even their separate 
pontiff, and as late as the fifteenth century. Of course 
with the unthinking masses this verisimilitude, this 
counterfeit of Christianity, had great power. 

The extent to which Manichseism prevailed, and 
the general growth of the system, is a point worthy 
of careful thought. How broad an impress, and how 
firm a hold this system had on Christianity, may be 
judged from the words of Mosheim : " Although the 
greatest and wisest men withstood it, both in oral dis- 
cussions and in books, yet they could not prevent its 
spreading with surprising rapidity almost throughout 
Christendom, and captivating a vast number of per- 
sons of moderate talents and judgment."* 

* Mos. Com., II. p. 251. 



2io PURGATORY. 

Mani died in or about 278 A. D. At that time his 
system prevailed in Media, Persia, Parthia, Bactria, 
Northern Africa, and in the European portions of the 
Roman Empire. It will be noticed that the founder, 
during his life, had thus pressed his purpose to supplant 
Christianity, and had kept pace with its growth in mCst 
of the regions where the early Christians had plant- 
ed it. In the following or fourth century ( ' the Mani- 
chaean sect beyond others, and by its very turpitude, 
ensnared many, and often persons of good talents also, 
as appears by the example of Augustine. This wide- 
spreading pestilence the most respectable doctors of 
the age, and among them Augustine, when recovered 
from his infatuation, made efforts to arrest, some 
indeed with more learning and discrimination, and 
others with less, but none of them without some suc- 
cess. But the disease could not be wholly extirpated 
either by books or severe laws, but after remaining 
latent for a time, and when most people supposed it 
extinct, it would break out again with fresh vio- 
lence ; for the Manichaeans, to avoid the severity of 
the laws, assumed successively various names, and 
under these names they often lay concealed for a 
time. ' ' * 

In the fifth century Manichaeism produced a nu- 
merous progeny under these assumed names, various 
and convenient ; and their boldness and success in the 
sixth century are seen in the fact that they made a 
convert of the son of the Persian monarch. This, 

* Mosheim's Eccl. Hist, Murdock's Trans., I. p. 282. 



THE MANICH&AN S YSTEM. 2 1 1 

however, was avenged by a fearful persecution and 
slaughter. The persecution of the followers of Mani 
began as early as the reign of Valentinian L, who 
came to the throne 364 A. D. Of course it only in- 
creased their fanaticism, while they made the point, 
so* popular and effective, that they were poor, perse- 
cuted Christians. This greatly multiplied them. 

In the following century the Greek Empire and 
Church came into civil conflict with these heretics, 
under the name of Paulicians, in Armenia and prov- 
inces adjoining ; and in this and the eighth century 
the disciples of Mani, under one name and another, 
increased much their strength through the whole East. 
This entire century was lighted up by the persecuting 
fires of the Greek Church against the Paulicians, and 
the fierce struggle was protracted past the middle of 
the ninth by Theodora, the Greek Empress, who de- 
creed that the sect should be won back to the Greek 
Church, or be exterminated by fire and sword. About 
one hundred thousand Manichseans thus perished in 
Armenia alone, where the Parsi ancestors of this reli- 
gion had laid its foundation a thousand years before. 
In the eighth century Constantine V. had removed a 
large body of this people to Thrace, that the East 
might not be so vexed with them. Yet in the tenth 
century they were still so abundant and powerful in 
Syria and the adjoining regions, that the bishop of 
Antioch, Theodorus, secured the deportation of an- 
other large colony to Thrace. Thence they migrated, 
carrying their doctrines as household gods to Bulgaria, 

19* 



212 PURGATORY. 

Slavonia, Italy, and Southern Europe generally. This 
relief of the Greek Church was to the annoyance and 
corruption of the Roman, and the papal pontiffs were 
thus put to great trouble. 

In the next century, the eleventh, the Greek Em- 
peror, Alexius Comnenus, seeing that persecution 
worked to their increase, tried argument in puBlic dis- 
cussions at Philippopolis, after which the converts 
were rewarded with honors, gifts of lands and houses, 
and other rich presents, and the obstinate were com- 
pelled to perpetual imprisonment. Then and after- 
wards they wandered off as apostles of their faith into 
Iyombardy and Insubria, and made Milan strong head- 
quarters, reaching out into France and Germany in 
their following of Christian footsteps. 

It is needless to follow these Manichseans farther 
into the dark ages under their various names. In 
their titles as heretics there were many changes, but 
in their tenets great constancy. The whole monkish 
system, which has had so much to do in the construc- 
tion of the papal theology, is a Manichaean child. 
With Mani matter is of the devil, and wholly evil, 
and our bodies are the product of the Demon, as the 
prisons of divine souls. Hence the struggle of the 
Christian life should be to abuse, abase, mutilate, and 
macerate the body, and bring it under, that the prison 
may be broken down and the prisoner go free. Hence 
monks and hermits, herb diet, pebbled shoes, hair 
shirts, spiked bedsteads, and all those saintly and 
nameless inventions to agonize human flesh. 



THE MANICHJEAN S YSTEM. 2 13 

We here close our survey of the ancient religions, 
preceding the Christian, on the point of eschatology, 
and turn our closing thoughts towards their formative 
and reconstructive influences on the system of One 
who spoke as ' ' having authority' ' when He ' { brought 
life and immortality to light.' ' 



2i 4 PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

RETROSPECT AND SUMMARY. 

Evidently the young Christian creed and church 
stand in an exposed foreground ; for in the back- 
ground, though in a sense dim with age and distance, 
were the Egyptian and Hindoo systems of future res- 
toration as we have unfolded them. They were far 
from extinct systems, and not lacking in such scholar- 
ship as those times produced, while their devout fol- 
lowers embraced the dense masses of Northern Africa 
and Western and Southern Asia. And what of lim- 
ited death these systems may have suffered had been 
more than replaced by the vital forces of the creed of 
Zoroaster. His purgatory was theirs, revised and 
adapted to newer ages and stages of philosophical and 
religious thought; and it held sway inclusive from 
the mouth of the Indus up and around by the Aral, 
Caspian, and Black Seas, along the Mediterranean 
from Constantinople to the Nile and upward, and 
thence by the Arabian Sea to the Indus again. In all 
the wide realms thus included purgatorial fires had 
been lighted by the priesthood, and the people were 
forecasting the spirit land with vivid and painful dis- 
tinctness. 

From the sixth century before Christ to the sev- 
enth in the Christian era, when Romanism had adopt- 



RE TR OSPECT AND S UMMAR V. 215 

ed purgatory as an organized power, this area was the 
thought-field of the world, where latent and germi- 
nant and systematizing religious ideas were in prepar- 
ation to recast the coming Christian system. Over 
such a range of country and through so long a range 
of centuries was this pressure maturing, and approach- 
ing like a glacial progress across a continent. When 
we consider the character of this system of Zoroaster, 
it will not surprise us that it had such a moulding and 
modifying influence on the Christian creed. * 

With all this theory of Zoroaster, Grecian and 
Roman eschatology, on the punitive and remedial 
side, was in substantial accord. l ' Through the great 
Aryan religious systems, Brahminism, Zarthustrism, 
Buddhism, and onward into the range of Islam and of 
Christianity, subterranean hells of purgatory or pun- 
ishment made the doleful contrast to heavens of light 

and glory. n f 

The popular presentations of purgatory, as set 
forth by Homer and Virgil, were but local openings or 
sectional views of that universal under-world which 
extended from the Indus, past the Nile, to the German 
Ocean. The Grecian and Roman theories are import- 
ant in our consideration of this topic, not only as well 

* "Of all the religions of Indo European origin, of all the religions of 
the ancient Gentile world, it may fairly claim to have been the most noble 
and worthy of admiration for the depth of its philosophy, the spirituality 
of its views and doctrines, and the purity of its morality." The Avesta, 
etc. By Wm. D, Whitney. Journal of the American Oriental Societv, 
V. p. 378. 

t Primitive Culture. By Edward B. Taylor. P. 68. Henry Holt & 
Co.: New York, 1874. 



216 PURGATORY. 

outlined and powerful, but as then embedded in the 
popular letters of the world and in the hand-books of 
those very regions where Christianity was to make 
its first popular conquests and organise itself. The 
thinking world, as it was then bounded and known 
by its writers and lecturers, its philosophers and poets, 
was permeated by these theories and visions and itin- 
eraries of the spirit land. 

Nearer still to the Christians, among them, and 
more or less of them, were the Gnostics and the Ma- 
nichseans. They were Romans and Greeks, Parsi, 
Brahmins, and Egyptians, reedited, if we may so say, 
with interlinear commentary and foot-notes. They 
had but little that was radically new, only those natu- 
ral increments or growths of thought that the ages 
add inevitably to human systems. Their structures 
were, substantially, old bricks in new mortar. 

The religious world was ' ( without form and void, 
and darkness was upon the face" of it. There was 
painful need that it be said authoritatively, ( ( Let 
there be light. ' ' Human philosophies and hopes and 
uncertainties and anxieties held our race in drift and 
commotion as to the after world. Evidently with 
great peril to itself, and only in a divine impulse and 
boldness, the Christian system came to the front, say- 
ing, "On earth, peace." The attendant dangers were 
manifold and enveloping. They lay in a " series of 
phenomena peculiar to this period, originating in the 
vast interchange among nations which this age wit- 
nessed, the contact of the East with the West, and 



RETROSPECT AND SUMMARY. 217 

the intermingling of the Eastern and Western spirit — 
such a series of events as occurs in history only at rare 
intervals."* 

This emigration of ideas multitudinous from the 
old Asiatic East, overrunning Southern and Western 
Europe, finds no better parallel or illustration than 
in those great tidal waves of the Aryan people with 
which Asia flooded Europe in prehistoric times. 
Those Aryans, of whom there are said to have been 
three distinct migrations westward in vast bodies, 
reconstructed radically the civil and social status of 
Europe, and furnish really the first authentic chapter 
in European history. For they dashed and broke up 
as waves on the natural boundaries between the two 
continents, and so planted out the several races and 
nations of historic Europe. 

Much after this manner those old religions of Asia 
and of Egypt, reconstructed and reappearing in vari- 
ous forms, moved westward on the fields that youthful 
Christianity was beginning to occupy, and mingled 
their human notions with divine certainties. These 
old tides of religious creed met the young and swell- 
ing Christian tide. Meanwhile the Church of God, 
unanchored in the Word of God, afloat on philosophy 
and policy, and sailed by a human compass on a 
human chart, was caught, like St. Paul's ship in 
Adria, c c where two seas met. ' ' 

It is not, therefore, so wonderful as it is painful 
that a pagan and classic purgatory crowded itself into 

* Neander, Church History, I. p. 365. 



2i8 PURGATORY. 

the young and rival religion. Far less spiritual than 
it might have been, courting popularity and ambitious 
of power, Christianity bid for hereditary places of 
honor by compromises with the ancient religions. 
With the Scriptures sparsely diffused, and in the frag- 
mentary manuscripts of their different authors, the 
text-books of the older world and their honored and 
august teachers were able to gain a front rank over 
the Word of God, and dictate creeds to the Christian 
fathers at the doors of the church. 

Hence the doctrine of purgatory is an inherited 
dogma from the pagan world, and forced into the 
papal Church in those days of juvenile weakness. 
The historical gleanings here made leave no doubt 
over this statement. While Gregory felt the pressure 
of this doctrine on the church from without, he no 
doubt foresaw its power as an element of government 
within the church. That power remains to-day, 
amplified, systematized, and consolidated, and, when 
necessary, concentrated on the individual church 
member. It pervades the entire literature of Roman- 
ism, from the alphabetical catechism to the creed of 
the Council of Trent. It is the one all-pervading and 
inexorable power in her discipline; and as the incul- 
cation of it is begun in infancy, and never remitted in 
the progress of years, it is inwrought into the very 
framework of beliefs and mental furniture. Hence, 
with the commonalty of the Romish communion, 
Protestant argument is like an attack on axioms; and 
hence, too, the rarity of conversions from that faith 



RETROSPECT AND SUMMARY. 219 

as compared with labor expended.. We dip at the 
reservoir to exhaust it of deadly waters, while they 
control all the head-springs that fill it. 

Therefore, in dealing with Romanism, an addi- 
tional policy may be needed and serviceable. If a 
deep and tender sympathy were shown to the masses 
in that communion, and the unscriptural, unscientific, 
and the pagano-historic character of this central doc- 
trine were candidly and kindly made known, a Chris- 
tian advance could be started all round. Allowance 
must be made for not only great but honest errors in 
papal faith and life, and approaches for improvement 
should be made to the body of that church as to sin- 
cere and candid people. Instead of denouncing dark- 
ness, it was divine wisdom and kindness to say, ' ' Let 
there be light. ' ' If there has not been in this treatise 
an entire misapprehension of this doctrine of Purga- 
tory and of its uses, it is the central power in the 
administration of the Roman-catholic Church. There- 
fore the enlightenment, improvement, and increased 
usefulness of that body, and its adaptation to the ad- 
vanced condition of the nineteenth century, must begin 
in that doctrine. * l And he went forth unto the spring 
of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, 
Thus saith the I^ord, I have healed these waters." 



Purgatory. 20 



22o PURGATORY. 



CHAPTER XXIII, 

CONCLUSION. 

HERE we close this historical disquisition on the 
cardinal doctrine of power in the Roman-catholic 
Church. In an authoritative statement of the doc- 
trine and its uses we have used the most popular and 
accredited text-books and treatises of that branch of 
the church. If there has been any failure in fairness 
or candor or fulness in this statement, it has not been 
consciously so, and will be recognized with regret. It 
has been no purpose of the author to treat the subject 
argumentatively or controversially; and if any quoted 
statements of the doctrine, or cases cited illustrative of 
its use, beget a controversial spirit in the mind of the 
reader, this must be credited to the quotations them- 
selves, and not to the intention of their collector. 

As to the origin of the embodied ideas that consti- 
tute this doctrine of purgatory, the field is a fair one 
for historical antiquaries. The genealogy of a theory, 
the pedigree of a notion, the genetic exposition of a 
theological dogma, may lead one back over curious 
and rare traits of human thought, and in the end may 
prove as humiliating as when one traces back his fam- 
ily genealogy too far. Pedigree, the stairway of the 
fathers, whether of families or of notions, is nothing 
very brilliant or honorable, often, in its lower steps. 



CONCLUSION. 221 

If, therefore, we have gone from the Tiber to the In- 
dus, and from the Indus to the Nile, in running back 
the ancestry of this doctrine of Christian Rome, and 
have found it well developed and energetically en- 
forced before an Old Testament made the record that 
u Terah begat Abram," we should not be regarded as 
assaulting a popular and modern church doctrine. 
We are simply led, historically, to show it to be ven- 
erable and hoary with antiquity. History is not po- 
lemic, and never makes assault on posterity. 

The Protestant faith concerning the condition of 
souls after death is nothing earlier or later or wiser 
than the revealed will and word of God. This close- 
ness of limits shuts one oflf from speculative philoso- 
phy, and theories of divine government, and sympa- 
thetic possibilities, and from premature endeavors to 
vindicate the ways of God. Assuming that nothing 
is known of the condition of the dead except what is 
revealed, both query and faith on the subject are closely 
shut up within the limits of Scriptural interpretation. 

Every one is credited at birth, by the Scriptures, 
with the gift of endless being. To be, or not to be, at 
any possible time in the indefinite future, is a question 
foreclosed by simply beginning to be. The obvious 
Scripture gives no encouragement to moot that ques- 
tion of terminable existence, either by exhaustion or 
by annihilation. The conviction of endless being has 
always had its place among the axioms of the human 
race, with only apparent denials enough, now and 
then, to manifest its universality. Herein the Scrip- 



222 PURGATORY. 

tures do not so much reveal as endorse an article in 
the universal creed. 

As one in Christian land carries with him the ele- 
ments and material of good or ill and joy or sorrow to 
the grave, so, according to revelation, he carries it 
over, and reaps as he has sowed. The Scriptures, 
when they speak without note or comment, say but 
one thing on this point. Indeed, up to this point, it 
may be said, the Protestant and Catholic Churches say 
but one and the same thing. 

A division arises when we come to speak of the 
divine pardon of the penitent believer in Christ that 
remits all penalty, and of the divine grace that breaks 
the power of sin and passes one at death perfectly 
sanctified into instant and perfect blessedness. On 
the one theory, men eminent for honor and usefulness, 
and for godliness, too, are introduced at death to suf- 
ferings ineffable and amid surroundings indescribably 
dreadful, though they have ceased from sin and are 
fully assured of heaven at last. On the other theory, 
the dying saint has instant and ineffable glory among 
the spirits of just men made perfect. These two theo- 
ries place two dying saints wide asunder on their en- 
trance to the next world, and literally toto ccelo from 
each other. 

The idea is wholly foreign to the Word of God that 
any punishment or suffering awaits him who, by re- 
pentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, has come into the state of justification, and 
thus passed to the better land. That justification is 



CONCLUSION. 223 

total and absolute. The blood of Christ has cleansed 
him from all sin, and there is therefore no condemna- 
tion to him, no remnant of demerit for purgatorial suf- 
fering. The bloody sweat and agony of our L,ord need 
no atoning supplement. Nor can we think of God as 
both pardoning and punishing the same sins — forgiv- 
ing us our debts and collecting them too. 

The Scriptures, as read by the Protestant Church, 
allow for no remedial, amendatory, or supplemental 
suffering for a child of God between the dying-bed 
and the gates of glory. Such an idea suggests two 
painful and repulsive thoughts: that the atonement is 
incomplete, and that man can bear, in part, his own 
sins in his own body, and so work out his own redemp- 
tion jointly with Christ. The evangelical pulpit of 
Protestant Christendom says, with great constancy 
and unity, that there are no acts of pardon passed be- 
yond the grave. As constantly and unitedly it says, 
that it is not by works of righteousness, but by mercy 
and grace in Christ alone, that sinful ones are saved. 

Hence the Protestant, dying in the sweet peace of a 
child of God, departs fully conscious that he is going 
out of the circle of all human aid, and beyond all need 
of it. What sympathies may follow him he can ima- 
gine, but that any helpful ones will ever reach him he 
has no remotest expectation, as he has no remotest an- 
ticipation of ever needing them. It is enough that 
there comes to him the assurance, from the infinite 
Author of a completed salvation, ' l To-day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise." It seems presumptuous in 

20* 



224 PURGATORY. 

us to volunteer aid for one who lias departed this life 
under such a promise, and is in the actual enjoyment 
of such company on the other side. 

It is a matter of literary curiosity, as well as of the- 
ological and religious interest, to notice on how solitary 
and frail a Scriptural thread this whole vast and fearful 
purgatorial system is suspended. Really there is but 
one passage that has any apparent or even exegetical 
pertinence; for what is said of the preaching of Christ 
to imprisoned souls of the times of Noah has no perti- 
nence, even on the papal theory. If those souls were 
in purgatory, they were penitent and pardoned and 
assured of heaven, and were only awaiting the end of 
the due amount of suffering. They were only subjects 
of suffering, and not at all candidates for repentance 
and the acceptance of the gospel. They had accepted 
Christ, and were as truly his friends as any in heaven. 
On the purgatorial theory, this must have been their 
character, condition, and expectation. The bottom 
fact of this passage is, that those antediluvians had 
had the offer of Christ by Noah, that " preacher of 
righteousness, " but were " disobedient, " and were 
now in the prison of spirits, when St. Peter wrote, 
having failed of salvation. 

A passage in Maccabees is the main and only 
pointed and obvious .Scriptural support of this doc- 
trine. Some exegetical and adroit uses are made of 
Matt. 5 : 25, 26; 12 : 32; 1 Cor. 3 : 10-15; 1 Pet. 3 : 19; 
and Rev. 21 : 27. But 2 Maccabees 12 : 32-46, is usu- 
ally the main dependence. The case stands thus: 



CONCLUSION. 225 

Judas Maccabeus engaged in battle with the Idume- 
ans, and several Jews were killed. When they came 
to inter these, idolatrous votive offerings were found 
concealed on their persons, which they had taken as 
plunder in a previous victory over the Jamnites. This 
was a heinous sin under the Jewish law, Deut. 7 : 25, 
or, as the Romanist would say, a mortal sin. To pu- 
rify the living from all contamination by this sin, and 
to appease the God of Israel, Judas made a collection 
of two thousand drachms of silver, and u sent it to Je- 
rusalem to offer a sin-offering. " * 

On this phrase the Douay version places the words, 
u a sacrifice for the sins of the dead," which is no 
translation of those two Greek words, nor yet a para- 
phrase, or even a gloss. It is an insertion or addi- 
tion to the text of so much as refers to the dead. 
Moreover, the sin of those dead men was punishable 
with death. It was ( c mortal ' ' to the Romanist, under 
which, unpardoned, one goes past purgatory to hell, 
from which there is no relief by u a sacrifice for the 
sins of the dead. ' ' 

In the authorised version the final verse in this ac- 
count reads thus: " And also in that he perceived that 
there was great favor laid up for those that died godly, 
it was a holy and good thought [to make the offering]. 
Wherefore he made a reconciliation for the dead, that 
they [the living] might be delivered from sin." In 
the Douay it is made to read thus : ( 4 And he consid- 
ered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness 

* Septuagint, ciuapnag Cvoiav. 



226 PURGATORY. 

had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a 
holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that 
they may be loosed from sins. ' ? Here, again, the sin- 
offering made for all the living, that they might not 
suffer for the transgressions of others, is turned into a 
sacrifice for the benefit of the dead, and the l c holy and 
wholesome thought to pray for the dead ' ' is introduced 
as new matter, not in the original Greek, but foreign 
to the text. 

But, not to extend minute criticisms, it remains 
only to be said that this passage, so enlarged beyond 
the original, and so interpreted, is not from the ac- 
cepted Bible, but from the Apocrypha. The Jews did 
not admit this book of Maccabees to the sacred canon; 
and among the early Christians it was rejected by Eu- 
sebius, Athanasius, Cyril, Hilary, Epiphanius, Greg- 
ory, and Gregory the Great, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffi- 
nus, Cardinal Ximenes, Cajetan, Erasmus, and prom- 
inent councils. 

Dr. Schaff says of the Apocryphal books: "They 
did not belong to the Hebrew canon; they were writ- 
ten after the extinction of prophecy ; they are not 
quoted in the New Testament; they contain some Jew- 
ish superstitions, and furnish the Roman -catholics 
proof- texts for their doctrines of purgatory, prayers for 
the dead, and the meritoriousness of good works. ' ' * 

And Dr. Bissell, in his General Introduction to the 
Apocrypha, says: u The apostles used a version of the 
Old Testament which contained the Apocrypha, but 

* Preface to the Apocrypha. By Edwin Cone Bissell, D. D. 



CONCLUSION. 227 

with so careful an avoidance of the latter that it can- 
not with certainty be affirmed that in all their writings 
they made a single direct allusion to them. "* 

In his Notes on this passage in Maccabees, he also 
says, emphatically, c l There is not, as a matter of fact, 
the slightest evidence that any such doctrine as that 
of the Romanists relating to purgatory had any exist- 
ence among the Jews at this time. ' ' 

Here, therefore, is our latest scholarship on the 
true reading of this famous text in Maccabees, that 
will leave it destitute of all reference to prayers for 
the dead. 

This discussion has nothing to do, directly, with 
questions concerning the punishment of the lost, since 
purgatory contains only saints, who will all finally 
depart and leave it vacant. Yet, in tracing these lines 
of thought, side views have been constantly calling 
our attention to the predominant sentiments of the 
world on the condition and prospects of the unsaintly 
or impenitent dead. 

One incidental and unsought issue, furnished by 
the investigation, is, that the great unrevealed reli- 
gions of the world teach the final restoration of all 
men to happiness. It is left to Christianity alone to 
teach otherwise. Till a comparatively late period in 
the history of our race, the vote of the great religions 
of mankind has left the Christian sect in an almost 
imperceptible minority. Latterly our revealed reli- 
gion has been tested to hold its ground, in the matter 

* General Introduction to the Apocrypha, p. 51. 



228 PURGATORY. 

of future punishment, against affiliation with the older 
systems on the one side, and the new theories of schol- 
ars on the other. 

A first probation for salvation by Christ, beyond 
the grave, for those who failed to receive it here ; a 
second probation, for those whose chances were most 
adverse under the first; the sinful soul wasted and 
dwarfed unto extinction of being under penal suffer- 
ing; abrupt and punitive annihilation — these are 
points more or less sharp and warm in recent theo- 
logical discussions. These theories solicit Christian 
adoption and baptism by an exegetical handling of 
the Scriptures. 

In handling the questions of sin and salvation as 
practical and personal ones, we have, this side the 
door of death, all needed divine aid to enter, just be- 
yond, the gates of glory. It is wholly without re- 
vealed warrant to expect that aid beyond death; and 
for one to look for and lean on the human aid of the 
living when he may come into the regions beyond, 
and where the divine has ceased, is rashness in the 
extreme. 




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